Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue asked hundreds of people who attended the 2008 Southeast Bioenergy Conference at the UGA’s Tifton Campus Conference Center to continue their efforts to make America energy-independent.

“Promise me today that this won’t be a fad for you,” Perdue said. “Maintain your passion and interest and this is the way solutions will come about.”

The conference continues through Thursday and is sponsored by Georgia’s Centers of Innovation Program. Growers, entrepreneurs, investors, business developers, researchers, educators, elected officials and the general public who are participating are hearing the latest information and having their questions answered by 60 national and international experts in the bioenergy industry.

Perdue said alternative fuel production is a growing industry and that the need is worldwide. He said that energy-intensive industries are struggling to adapt and become more energy efficient. He said this country’s energy independence would mean that $700 billion would not have to be sent overseas to some “not so nice people” for fossil fuels.

Perdue said that Forbes Magazine rated Georgia third in the United States for production of alternative fuels in the future and that in three years the state had recruited $700 million in investments in biofuel in a variety of fields. He said one of the most promising sources for the production of biofuel was in Georgia’s 24 million acres of forest.

“We will be a world leader in bringing alternative energy to market,” Perdue remarked.

While at the conference center, Perdue met with Tift County High School FFA Advisor Jimmy Cargle and FFA members at a booth the group set up among others at the conference center. Students in the program began making biodiesel from waste vegetable oil donated from the school system’s lunchroom and modified a tractor donated by the board of education to run on biodiesel, petrodiesel or a combination of both. The tractor and biodiesel project was entered into the Georgia Youth Environmental Symposium in January of 2007 and the team, consisting of 10 students, won first place at the Youth Environmental Symposium, with their project, “A Comparison of Emissions Using Petro versus Biodiesel.”

The program was recently awarded a $35,000 grant from the Georgia Dept. of Agriculture to continue research and student training.

Students grew the super sweet sorghum and peanuts on the school’s campus and also had jars of ethanol produced from apples, sugar beets and watermelons on display as well as the machinery used to distill the fuel.

Jarod Glatz, a 2008 graduate of TCHS and former member of Cargle’s group, was also on hand at the conference Tuesday. He said that he starts classes at Abraham Baldwin College Monday and looking forward to pursing a career in alternative fuels. Glatz said his interest in the field was sparked when Cargle asked him to be on the biodiesel team that converted the tractor. Glatz won second place at an FFA State Convention in the engineering division for his methane digester that can turn most any organic material high in sugar and carbohydrates into gas.

“This (Glatz) is the first graduate from Tift County High School going into alternative fuel,” Cargle said.

Cargle said he has hopes to use the school system’s waste vegetable oil to produce alternative fuel that can be blended with diesel to run the system’s buses that currently use 5,000 of diesel fuel annually.

Bill Boone, director of the Agriculture Innovation Center on Rainwater Road in Tifton, said tat Cargle has exposed 75 students to the production of alternative fuels.

“Tift County High School is the only school in Georgia doing this,” Boone noted.