Southside companies meet with national leaders

Two Southside bioenergy companies gave Washington their two cents.

The leaders of Piedmont BioProducts LLC, of Gretna, and Red Birch Energy LLC, of Martinsville, attended the Regional Energy Leadership Briefing in Washington on Monday with about 100 other business and nonprofit leaders and state lawmakers.

Commerce Secretary Gary Locke and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack convened the meeting to not only inform stakeholders of the Obama administration’s goals to jump-start an American clean energy sector, but to receive feedback from regional leaders at the industry’s forefront, a White House spokes-person said. The plan calls for creating millions of new jobs developing technologies that will cut pollution while producing alternative sources of energy.

Both Ken Moss, chief executive officer of Piedmont BioProducts, and H. Dean Price, owner of Red Birch Energy, shared their business models and showed how decentralizing a clean energy industry would benefit local economies.

“I think this government is listening,” Price said. “This industry is laden with jobs.”

Red Birch contracts with farmers to grow canola to produce biodiesel from canola seeds in facilities adjacent to its Red Birch Country Market truck stops in Henry County, where vehicles can fuel up on the local product.

Price foresees a transition in the country where “mom and pop operations” would create energy instead of having to rely on large-scale production of fuel from foreign petroleum oil. Smaller biofuel refineries could be built in the communities where the source product grows.

Moss agreed that changes in the nation’s energy infrastructure would be inevitable and that a community-based model would keep money spent on energy within the local economy.

Piedmont BioProducts’ farmers produce feedstock, like grasses and brush, for the more advanced second-generation biofuel industry, Moss said.

Keeping all aspects of this energy production localized ensures communities would benefit not only from more stable fuel prices, but also in the areas of manufacturing to build refineries, research and education, Moss said. Educators would need to teach the workforce new skills for the clean industry.

“These jobs are ones not likely to be outsourced,” he added.

Part of Monday’s debate centered on how to motivate farmers to participate in bioenergy, Moss said. Piedmont offers the incentive of allowing the farmers to share ownership of the company in a “hybrid cooperative model.”

Another key player in attracting national attention to Southside’s growth in clean and green industry is the Institute for Advanced Learning and Research, which studies bioenergy and biotechnology in partnership with Virginia Tech.

The Institute in Danville partners with Moss and others in the bio-industry to reinforce the area’s economic development and continues a dialogue with lawmakers and administration officials, said Deborah Morehead, director of communications and public relations.

Moss also attributes federal attention to the Southside area to Rep. Tom Perriello, D-5th District. Perriello published an outline in July on how Southside and Central Virginia were positioned to lead the nation in a clean energy economy.

“Our local entrepreneurs are already the best in the nation at energy-efficiency modular homes, biofuels, bio-refineries, and nuclear energy,” Perriello said via news release in July. “If we have the courage to move from merely surviving to thriving as a region, this can be a homerun for our farmers, advanced manufacturers, and construction industries.”

Moss thinks more leaders are becoming aware of the possibilities of a mid-Atlantic region like Southside becoming an epicenter of growth for new green and clean industry.

“I think we had a vast unrealized opportunity that people are beginning to recognize,” Moss said.