Bring Out Your Carbon!

October 07, 2026

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by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest) ... This week comes a new AA-rated BDO Zone centered on Prescott, Arkansas: 1,026,000 bone-dry tons a year of low-risk woody biomass inside a 75-mile drive radius.

A million tons. Not a million tons that might be there, a promising geological formation, or something suggested by seismic echoes from the Jurassic.

A million affordable, sustainable tons of wood. Right. There.

The underlying numbers are almost rude about it. There are 1.368 million tons per year of forest residues in the supply zone with essentially no present industrial draw, plus another 1.026 million tons of surplus pulpwood before conservative availability factors are applied. And this is southwest Arkansas. Down the road is Hope.

A town called Hope.

Only America could have a million tons of renewable carbon lying around a town called Hope and still organize a national search party for diesel.

...

Geopolitics is doing that thing geopolitics does when everybody suddenly remembers that an enormous share of modern civilization depends upon combustible liquids moving freely through places with names such as Hormuz.

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Pulp and paper spent more than a century doing much of the heavy lifting. There are wood yards and boilers and steam systems and rail sidings and wastewater treatment works and truck scales and power connections and maintenance shops and people who already understand the decidedly unromantic business of getting large quantities of wood through an industrial gate every morning.

Walk around one of these sites and you encounter more heavy industrial infrastructure than you could collect in a thousand years of American Pickers.

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Southwest Arkansas is not remarkable because somebody discovered trees there. It is remarkable because somebody did the work of saying, with institutional rigor: Here they are.

This is what the BDO Zone initiative has been doing around North America. How much feedstock? Where? At what price? Who already uses it? How much redundancy is required? What does the infrastructure look like? How much can a new project prudently count upon? In other words, all the things that once allowed the Official with the clipboard to say, Yes, but nobody really knows, are steadily disappearing.

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Because woody biomass is only part of an American biomass resource that is almost preposterously large. DOE’s Billion-Ton Report concludes that the United States has the capacity to produce more than one billion tons of biomass every year while still meeting projected requirements for food, feed, fiber, conventional forest products and exports. Enough, DOE estimates, for something on the order of 60 billion gallons of liquid biofuels.

Sixty. Billion. Gallons. Annually.

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Let us make the thought experiment smaller. Forget 60 billion gallons. Take 100 million tons of wood. Ensyn has reported results of at least 70 gallons of fully fungible hydrocarbon transportation fuel per ton of wood biomass.

That’s 7 billion erfing gallons. It’s like a strategic petroleum reserve that grows back. Except you don’t need the salt cavern. Any reasonably cooperative patch of dirt will do.

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None of this makes refining wood easy. Good. Refining petroleum isn’t easy. Modern industrial civilization is an enormous collection of things that are not easy. There was a time when woody biofuels had legitimate unanswered questions everywhere you looked. Some of those questions remain project-specific. Some technologies will fail. Some deserve to.

But the argument has moved. We all know we can do this. The trees are there. The technologies are there. The old infrastructure is there. The need is there.

What is increasingly scarce is the willingness to build the industrial bridge between them.

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The trees are right there. Look at them. Look at them. READ MORE

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Southwest Arkansas Issued BDO Zone ‘AA’ Rating for Woody Biomass (Biofuel Development Opportunity Zone Initiative)

Excerpt from Biofuel Development Opportunity Zone Initiative: Southwest Arkansas Development Alliance, Ecostrat and the BDO Zone Initiative are pleased to announce the issue of a BDO Zone ‘AA’ Rating for Southwest Arkansas. The BDO Zone is rated for 1,026,000 bone dry tons per year of low-risk woody biomass and spans a 75-mile drive radius from its central point in Prescott, AR.

Southwest Arkansas ‘AA’ rating denotes very high prospective viability of Feedstock Supply and Infrastructure and low expectations of default risk in the Zone. Southwest Arkansas stands out for its structural surplus of woody biomass and the timber growth in the region outpaces removals by a 1.6 growth-to-drain ratio, backed by an established procurement network and a diversified supplier base spanning three states. The anchor site — Prescott Industrial Park, 126 acres on Interstate 30 — brings on-site rail via the Prescott & Northwestern Railroad, 13.8 kV electric service, Summit Utilities natural gas, and municipal water and sewer. Combined with competitive regional labor costs, Southwest Arkansas offers a compelling, low-risk profile for biobased industrial development.

Anna Lee Powell, President of Southwest Arkansas Development Alliance, stated, “Southwest Arkansas has the feedstock, the workforce, and the site-ready infrastructure to support serious biobased investment. This ‘AA’ rating reflects the strength of our region’s sustainably managed timberland and the readiness of Southwest Arkansas, and we see it as a meaningful signal to developers and investors looking for a very low-risk, high-viability location on the I-30 corridor.”

Mary Godwin, Director of Prescott Economic Development, stated, “The designation of a BDO zone for the Prescott Industrial Park represents a significant opportunity to position Prescott and Southwest Arkansas as a regional hub for woody-biomass utilization and advanced biofuel development. The AA rating will signal to investors and bioenergy developers that the Prescott Industrial Park is positioned to compete nationally for new bio-based manufacturing facilities that will support biomass supply chain, renewable fuels, biomass energy and other emerging bio products.”

Jordan Solomon, Chairman of the BDO Zone Initiative, stated, “Southwest Arkansas combines a structural oversupply of pulpwood with a significant, largely untapped forest residue stream and a feedstock profile that’s hard to match. When you pair that with a shovel-ready, rail- and interstate-served industrial site in Prescott, this is one of the strongest signals we can send to biobased developers about where to locate their next project.”

To see the full BDO Zone Rating for Southwest, AR, please click here, or visit www.bdozone.org.

BDO Zone Project Development Support:

Anna Lee Powell
President
Southwest Arkansas Development Alliance
anna@hopeusa.com
870-777-8485

Ryan Magwood
Head of Business Development
BDO Zone Initiative
ryan@ecostrat.com
647-962-3286

Mary Godwin
Director
Prescott Economic Development
mgodwin@pnpartnership.org
870-703-4912

About The BDO Zone Initiative

The Biofuel Development Opportunity (BDO) Zone Initiative certifies ‘regional readiness’ for bio-manufacturing, creates global connections and ignites an influx of new energy opportunities for farmers, economic developers, and rural businesses. A BDO Zone rating is an internationally recognized, standards-based technical risk assessment of a region’s feedstock, supply chain, and infrastructure risk with respect to the development potential for new biofuel plants. BDO Zone ratings are site location bullseyes for bio-project development. Investment grade ratings are force-multipliers for attracting new manufacturing plants to the areas where they are most likely to succeed, drive investment and create jobs.

For more information on the BDO Zone Initiative, contact info@bdozone.org. To view all BDO Zone ratings, visit www.bdozone.org. Check out the BDO Zone LinkedIn page for news and updates.

Ecostrat is the North American leader in biomass due diligence for biofuels, renewable chemicals, biogas, and bio-product project development and finance. Jordan Solomon is Chairman of the BDO Zone Initiative and President of Ecostrat (www.ecostrat.com). He can be reached at jordan.solomon@ecostrat.com. READ MORE