In 2006, South Carolina's population was 4,321,249. The population in 2000 was 4,012,012. This represents a 7.7% increase in just six years (Click here for more details).

South Carolina is small, ranking 40th by land mass in the US. It measures only 219 miles north to south, and 273 miles east to west. The Total area is 31,189 square miles, including 30,111 square miles of land (96.5%), 1,006 square miles of inland water area and 72 square miles of coastal water area. (Click here for more details)

Given its relatively small size, it comes as quite a surprise to find out that South Carolina is ranked fourth in the nation when it comes to total highway mileage:

• Miles of interstate highways – 844 (2006)
• Miles of state primary roads – 9,411.97 (1998)
• Miles of state secondary roads – 31,287.32 (1998)

South Carolinians are not short of vehicles, with almost one registered vehicle for every person in the state. Note that the statistics below probably do NOT include off-road vehicles like farm tractors:

• Number of private & commercial vehicles – 3,339,458 (2005)
• Number of public vehicles – 52,006 (2005)
• Number of off-road farm vehicles (unknown)

So the key question of this feasibility study is:

1. Given an expected 5 million residents, 4 million motorized vehicles and 30,000 square miles of land, is it possible to locally produce enough fuel and lubricants to meet the total state-wide demand?

Applying simple math to this question yields a theoretical need for each square mile to provide the annual fuel and lubricant for approximately 130 vehicles. But this number isn't very useful. The 31,189 square miles in South Carolina equals 19,960,960 acres (640 acres per square mile). Given 4 million vehicles and 20 million acres, and assuming you could use all the land, only 0.2 acres per vehicle is needed, assuming energy yields from "home-grown" solutions were possible to meet the state-wide needs.

Obviously not all of the land is available for this purpose. So what is conceivable, and what could be a realistic estimate of meeting present and future needs?

In 2004, South Carolina farms and farmland were estimated to be:

Number of Farms	Total farm acres	Percent of state	Average farm size (acres)
24,400	4,855,600	25%	199

Source: USDA:National Agriculture Statistics Service

There appears to be considerable additional land in South Carolina that currently lies fallow and could be put back into agricultural use. Defining and locating this additional land is a key STUDENT project within Greenway Labs.

Very little, if any South Carolina agricultural land is currently used to produce biofuels ( click here for additional details)

So let us assume that there is ONE-QUARTER ACRE OF LAND COULD BE AVAILABLE FOR EACH VEHICLE IN SOUTH CAROLINA. (Please note that this is a purely hypothetical assumption for the purposes of this analysis.) This translates into 1 million acres, or 25% of South Carolina's farm land, or 5% of the South Carolina's total area.

The next facet of this analysis is to determine the feasibility of producing the fuel and lubricants needed for South Carolina's vehicles given 1 million acres of land. Here we need to make additional assumptions:

• It is not reasonable to assume that Americans can continue to drive vehicles that average 15 miles per gallon.

• It is reasonable to assume that a combined average of 50 miles per gallon is technologically achievable in the near future

• Annual mileage driven in the US will continue to decrease as fuel prices increase, declining to an average of 12,000 miles per year per vehicle

• Currently, the most feasible biofuel is BIODIESEL. This would require replacing most of the existing gasoline-based vehicle fleet

For the purposes of this study we will use the 50MPG and 12K miles per year per vehicle assumptions as the basis of analysis.

4 million vehicles, 50 miles per gallon, and 12,000 miles per year per vehicle equals 960,000,000 gallons per year. If 1 million acres are dedicated to fuel production, each acre would need to produce 960 gallons. Recent estimates indicate that biofuel crop yields between 80 to 200 gallons per acre are possible, leaving a considerable shortfall. In conclusion, traditional agricultural production could only meet between 8% to 20% of the total need. Please note that this is not an unacceptable conclusion. South Carolina farmers could greatly benefit from adding an additional "cash crop", and growing BIODIESEL has great promise (click here for more details).

Fortunately, there are other local potential sources of biofuel production. These range from "immediately doable" to "sometime (maybe) in the next ten to twenty years". Here are some options:

Immediate Options

• Progress is being made in recovering and refining BIODIESEL from municipal waste. Estimates range from 80 to 200 gallons of BIODIESEL produced from each one of processed MSW. This effort, however, requires large amounts of capital investment and often lengthy government review and approval.

• Ethanol production is expanding elsewhere. Ethanol may offer an alternative to gasoline in many existing vehicles. Ethanol production, however, requires very large amounts of water which is an increasingly scarce resource in South Carolina.

Near-Term Options

Long-Term Options