RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, NC – BioSAT was presented with a 2009 Innovator Award from
Southern Growth Policies Board on June 8, 2009 in Biloxi, Mississippi as part of the Southern Energy: Abundant, Affordable, and American conference. Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour presented James Perdue, Senior Biological Scientist with the US Forest Service, and Tim Young, Associate Professor in the Forest Products Center at the University of Tennessee, with the Innovator award for the state of Tennessee at the conference’s Governors’ Reception and Innovators’ Award Ceremony. The Southern Energy: Abundant, Affordable, and American conference focused on the issue of energy-related economic development and represented the culmination of a year-long series of activities around the theme Southern Energy – including community forums, state events, an online survey, the publication of a regional asset map on bioenergy, and recommendations from The Southern Common Market on Alternative Fuels.
Each year, Southern Growth Policies Board honors innovative Southern initiatives that are improving the quality of life in the region. The 2009 Innovator Awards recognize creative initiatives in the region that encourage economic opportunities relating to bio-products, alternative energy, and/or energy efficiency. Awards were presented to an organization in each of Southern Growth’s member states — Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia.
About BioSAT
In 2007, the U.S. Forest Service, Southern Research Station and the Southeastern SunGrant Center at The University of Tennessee formed a partnership to provide research, policy, and business
practitioners with innovative, biomass to energy, research that accommodates regional differences in available feedstock supplies, infrastructure capacities, and environmental benefits for the South and beyond. Through integrated research relationships we foster a better understanding of global energy influences on the agricultural and forest sector and its continued productive management and use. The genesis of BioSAT grew from the idea that the stability of biomass markets hinge on improved methods to display the risk and cost of supply and logistics from farm/forest gate to conversion facility. A major difficulty is that feedstock production in the field is not automatically linked to proposed facility locations. The BioSAT (Biomass Site Assessment Tools) web system helps rapidly screen and optimally site cellulosic biomass collection or processing centers by zip-code tabulation area for the 33 Eastern states. BioSAT focuses on supply chain cost and logistics from farm/forest gate to collection or conversion facility, maps and displays up-to-date baseline data for public and business leaders, assesses the economic availability of woody and agricultural-derived biomass, identifies local market conditions, and thereby reduces screening time to locate sites favorable for full business case due diligence. For more information, visit http://www.biosat.net/.
About Southern Growth Policies Board
Southern Growth Policies Board is a regional public policy think tank based in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina. Formed by the region’s governors in 1971, Southern Growth Policies Board develops and advances visionary economic development policies by providing a forum for collaboration among a diverse cross-section of the region’s governors, legislators, business and academic leaders and the economic and community development sectors. Southern Growth provides its members, and the region, with authoritative research, discussion forums and pilot projects in the areas of technology and innovation, globalization, workforce development, community development, civic engagement and leadership. To learn more about Southern Growth Policies Board, visit www.southern.org.