Plans are in the works to build a biofuel plant in St. Charles Parish that will use wood waste to produce sustainable aviation fuel and “green” methanol.
Southern Energy Renewables, which produces low-cost fuels from biomass, and DevvStream Corp., a Canadian carbon-credit business, announced Wednesday they would join together in a single company. The deal is set to close in the first half of 2026, and the business will be headquartered in Louisiana and operate under the Southern Energy Renewables name.
The company has signed a letter of intent to purchase a site for the biofuel plant somewhere in St. Charles. Plans are to break ground on the facility in the middle of next year. Southern Energy has secured a $402 million bond allocation from the Louisiana Community Development Authority to build the plant.
Green methanol is produced from carbon dioxide and biomass.
The time is right to develop a renewable fuel plant, because of the ambitious decarbonization mandates aviation operators are facing, said Carl Stanton, chairman of DevvStream. But the problem is that renewable fuels are more expensive than fossil fuels.
“This merger matters now because Southern’s technology, low-cost feedstock, and development platform, combined with DevvStream’s environmental-asset capabilities, are aimed at reducing that cost burden and enabling compliance at scale,” Stanton said in a statement.
Southern Energy also plans to build a carbon sequestration facility in Monroe.