“I’m not a historian, but I feel history is in the making,” Perdue said. “Our state will be on the forefront of solving the energy crisis and our reliance on foreign oil... We are shifting the focus to cellulosic ethanol. With 24 million acres of forest, we are second in the nation. We hope Range Fuels will be the first of many bio fuels plant in the state.”

Vinod Khosla, founder of Range Fuels from California, said the plant is part of a declaration of war on combating the monopoly that crude oil suppliers have on the U.S.

“For a few years I have said we need to declare war. Corn ethanol started the war,” Khosla said. “Cellulosic ethanol is the weapon we need to replace foreign oil. This is far bigger than anyone realizes.”

To naysayers who predicted that it would be as many as 10 years before ethanol and the U.S. auto industry could produce enough ethanol and vehicles that run on the fuels to have any impact on the energy crisis, Khosla had a smile to match his stern reply.

“The naysayers say that because we already are dependent on foreign oil, we always will be,” Khosla said. “Ethanol will be cheaper than gasoline. But we spent millions of dollars to develop this technology. We will not now share that technology with these researchers who said this couldn’t happen, just to prove we’re right.”

Khosla and Haigwood noted that General Motors and Ford have made commitments to make half of the vehicles they build with engines that run on E-85, or 85 percent of ethanol blended with 15 percent of gasoline, by 2012, if there are enough ethanol stations to support the vehicles. Perdue noted that Atlanta opened its first ethanol station this week.