In 2007, Range Fuels broke ground on a Georgia plant designed to produce 100 million gallons of ethanol a year from wood waste; by 2011, it had closed without selling any

In November 2007, bulldozers hit the ground in Soperton, Georgia, to begin construction on what was hoped to be a symbol of America’s commitment to energy independence. A factory was being built to convert pine offcuts and wood waste into 100 million gallons of ethanol each year, helping reduce the nation’s reliance on foreign oil. Politicians attended, and investors handed over cash.

However, according to a 2011 Bloomberg publication, the factory was closed in 2011 with not a single gallon sold. The company, Range Fuels, was backed by as much as $156 million in combined federal grants and loan guarantees dating back to the Bush administration, but was forced to liquidate its sole factory after defaulting on a loan. This is one entry in a longer list of early “green moonshots,” among them Solyndra and Beacon Power, that collapsed despite heavy public backing, and it illustrates a recurring risk: governments funding immature technologies before they are ready to scale.

A plant built on a promise nobody could keep

Range Fuels promised to use a chemical process that would convert wood chips into ethanol without using the slow and costly enzymes other companies relied on. It was said to be starting "a new future for our country" by the then Governor of Georgia. However, the gasifiers used to break down biomass did not perform consistently, and the factory produced minuscule amounts of methanol instead of ethanol. According to National Geographic, Range Fuels ultimately drew only about half of the federal grant and loan-guarantee money it had been offered, a shortfall put at more than $85 million in lost public funds. Eventually the factory was sold for a fraction of its original value.

It wasn’t just one company that bet wrong

Range Fuels’ failure sat inside a broader policy shortfall: the federal cellulosic ethanol mandate itself has missed its own targets in nearly every year since it took effect. The federal law that expanded the cellulosic ethanol mandate (part of the Renewable Fuel Standard): the Energy Independence and Security Act, signed in December 2007, roughly a month after Range Fuels broke ground, expected the cellulosic biofuels industry to scale up rapidly. Range Fuels’ own plans were drawn up ahead of that law, built instead on the existing 2005 Renewable Fuel Standard and on the company’s own production targets, so the plant’s failure cannot be laid entirely at the 2007 mandate’s door, but the law set expectations the wider industry, Range included, went on to miss. A 2019 peer-reviewed study titled “Why the cellulosic biofuels mandate fell short: a markets and policy perspective,” published in Biofuels, Bioproducts and Biorefining, found that the cellulosic biofuels industry consistently failed to meet the volumes required. In fact, the mandate may have hindered commercialisation by putting pressure on the cost of an immature technology.

The numbers speak for themselves. A separate 2026 analysis titled “The Biofuels Blueprint: Understanding the U.S. Renewable Fuel Standard,” published in the journal Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy, reports that by 2022, fifteen years after the mandate was expanded, only about 20 billion gallons of total renewable fuels had been achieved, well below the 36 billion gallons legislated. This was largely due to the lack of cellulosic biofuels, the very type Range Fuels was meant to pioneer. Since the law was passed, the EPA has quietly reduced the mandate almost every year.

Why this still matters for climate tech today

This does not mean wood-based fuels or next-generation biofuels are a dead end. Some of the science involved has progressed since 2011, and other companies have produced cellulosic ethanol. However, it may be a good example of why we should be cautious of the current hydrogen, carbon capture, and battery metal startups taking billions of subsidies based on a pitch deck and groundbreaking ceremony.

The lesson isn’t that governments shouldn’t fund risky, early-stage climate technology, sometimes that’s exactly how breakthroughs happen. Rather, it’s that mandates and subsidies should be scaled to what a technology can realistically deliver, not to what a pitch promises. Soperton, Georgia is still left with a vacant industrial site.