« New US Legislation Proposes 60 Billion Gallon Renewable Fuel Standard | Main | Malaysian Company To Build First Plant in Large Nipah Palm Ethanol Project; Envisions Eventual Output of 1.2 Billion Gallons per Year »
Senators Re-Introduce Coal-to-Liquids Legislation
5 January 2007
US Senators Jim Bunning (R-KY) and Barack Obama (D-IL) have re-introduced a piece of legislation that would help create the infrastructure needed for large-scale production of Coal-to-Liquids (CTL) fuel in the US.
The proposed “Coal-To-Liquid Fuel Promotion Act of 2007” is based on the bill first introduced by Senators Bunning and Obama last spring and expands tax incentives, creates planning assistance, and develops Department of Defense support for a domestic CTL industry.
The Coal-to-Liquid Fuel Promotion Act of 2007 enables the Department of Energy to provide loan guarantees for construction and direct loans for the planning and permitting of CTL plants. Loan guarantees will encourage private investment and planning loans will help companies prepare a plant for construction.
This legislation also will expand investment tax credits and expensing provisions to include coal-to-liquids plants, extend the Fuel Excise Tax credit, and expand the credit for equipment used to capture and sequester carbon emissions.
Finally, the bill provides the Department of Defense the funding and authorization to purchase, test, and integrate these fuels into the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and military fuel supplies.
The Senators also announced they will form the Senate Coal-to-Liquid Fuel Caucus to help drive the legislation forward.
Both Kentucky and Illinois have massive coal reserves. Obama also sponsored the just-introduced BioFuels Security Act of 2007 that would institute a 60 billion gallon Renewable Fuel Standard by 2030. (Earlier post.)
January 5, 2007 in Coal-to-Liquids (CTL), Policy | Permalink | Comments (54) | TrackBack (0)
TrackBack
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.typepad.com/t/trackback/22062/7393533
Listed below are links to weblogs that reference Senators Re-Introduce Coal-to-Liquids Legislation:
Comments
I thought Obama was in the Gore camp w.r.t. climate change. Perhaps lobbyists have worked on him. There are no problems with CTL provided a meaningful CO2 cap is in place. More CTL would then mean less coal fired electricity for air conditioned shopping malls.
Posted by: Aussie | Jan 5, 2007 2:17:27 PM
Are we trading air-dirty oil for air-dirty coal? Don't know what's in the bill; but, I hope it includes at least smoke stack scrubbers for the current acid- rain problems and smog-less burning requirements for the autos.
Posted by: Lad | Jan 5, 2007 2:26:32 PM
Coal mining is a large industry in IL but not as big as some other states like KY. WY easily does 1/3 of all coal mining in the US so I'm surprised they didn't get a senator from that state involved as well.
Posted by: Patrick | Jan 5, 2007 2:51:23 PM
I would also hope it contains sequestration of the extra CO2 generated by the process (or at least algae culture).
Posted by: Neil | Jan 5, 2007 2:51:39 PM
Obama is from a coal state.As are other now powerful dems.The best bet is to push for adapting algea tech to these kinds of plants.There are to many dollars and votes to expect dems to shy away from this tech.Ctl is a powerful security tool for national and military independence.Perhaps Obama and others will push for loan guarantees to be coupled with sequestration.This will happen so its probably more productive to look for best mitigation as opposed to fighting it.
Posted by: earl | Jan 5, 2007 2:58:21 PM
Coal in Wyoming is low sulphur - CTL favors cheaper high-sulphur (less desirable for burning in coal power plants because of acid rain) coal because the FT process cleans out the sulphur. Illinois and Kentucky have high sulphur coal, so a robust CTL infrastructure would benefit those states the most in terms of production/jobs/pork etc.
Posted by: Nate Fairchild | Jan 5, 2007 2:59:33 PM
The Governor of Montana has been preomoting CTL with sequestration for years. He was on 60 minutes one night showing what can be done. Maybe they can get something going that the private sector has not.
Posted by: SJC | Jan 5, 2007 3:01:47 PM
I don't know if this includes sequestration. If it does not, that will be one less candidate I need to analyze for 2008. Now, I guess, we know what Obama means when he says he supports alternative fuels. Obama appears to be in the camp that will do everything possible to ensure that we continue easy motoring in America.
We don't need a renewable fuel standard. What we need to do is realize what a disaster ethanol is with respect to reasonable food prices in America. If anything, we need a moratorium on anymore ethanol plants in America.
Obama is like virtually like every other politician; he is afraid to tell people that we can't have both, a livable planet and one that is banking its future on coal.
Posted by: t | Jan 5, 2007 3:52:29 PM
Obama just lost my vote....
Posted by: eric | Jan 5, 2007 4:28:29 PM
Good stuff, t!
Obama must have learned about supply side economics (without regards to external costs CO2) in a moment of bipartisanship. He's certainly doing a good job grabbing the low-hanging fruit!
Posted by: FYI co2 | Jan 5, 2007 4:29:58 PM
1. Does anyone know if CTL can be performed with salt water?
Like someone else said, this will probably happen; Big Coal is too big for it not to happen. All we can do is hope for the best.
CTL wouldn't be a terrible thing if it is done the right way. I'd support the bill if it had conditions that stated that all excess CO2 emissions be captured by algae.
Dirty air from U.S. CTL beats dirty air from Arab oil in my book...but not by much...
Posted by: John | Jan 5, 2007 5:52:09 PM
Gee I don't know guys, the image of new belching smokestacks in the midwest seems unbelievable even for greedy politicians these days. Yeah, the deal is CTL provided the emissions are controlled or better, captured by algae for another source of revenue. It's not stellar navigation to get greedy energy producers to produce more energy for more income... is it?
Posted by: gr | Jan 5, 2007 6:55:37 PM
Does anyone know if CTL can be performed with salt water?
The cost of desalinating the water that's used for CTL will be a small fraction of the cost of CTL. Remember, the water actually consumed in the chemical reactions isn't much, roughly the same volume as the liquid produced. Desalinated sea water is about 500 times cheaper, per unit volume, than crude oil.
Posted by: Paul Dietz | Jan 5, 2007 7:05:52 PM
It might be okay even with the salt; the Wabash River plant needed a chloride scrubber even running on fresh water, so it may just be a question of efficiency.
The lousy efficiency and GHG emissions should rule this out, though. Why on earth would these guys go for CTL instead of IGCC and electric vehicles? Don't they know it's possible, or is there a hidden agenda?
Posted by: Engineer-Poet | Jan 5, 2007 7:40:26 PM
Digging permanently sequestered carbon (coal) out of the ground and spewing it into the air in the form of CO2 would be a total non-starter if the true long-term costs were factored in. (Got to get to that worldwide carbon cap and trade system somehow...)
Posted by: Nick | Jan 5, 2007 8:27:25 PM
WY easily does 1/3 of all coal mining in the US so I'm surprised they didn't get a senator from that state involved as well.
Finding large reliable year-round supplies of even relatively clean water is a problem in Wyoming. Not only is there the scarcity issue, but Western water law is strange and twisted. In addition to the problems of senior and junior rights (and a new application like CTL would be very junior in its standing), there are the difficulties presented by the various interstate compacts regarding required deliveries across state lines.
If you have to do CTL, probably far easier to obtain water in IL or KY. Assuming it's done on a large scale, might also be easier to find refinery capacity for a million bbl/day relatively nearby.
Posted by: Michael Cain | Jan 5, 2007 8:33:56 PM
Water is very scarce in the west. heck in the 1890s Kansas and Colorado almost went to war with national guard troops at each side of the border. Last guy to get killed over water in Wy was in 1999...hmm, maybe pipe it in from Canada? Great lakes? move the coal to the water?
Anyway on the bright side cant CTL go to BTL in the future with some conversion? Setting up an infrastructure now is very much needed. Likewise Wy coal is very clean. In fact the energy used to make this post is produced from one of the cleanest coal plants in the US using Wy coal at .06 per KWH
It may be feasible one day to attach algae bio farms to CTL plants. Likewise the surfer that is removed from any power plants stack can be converted into sulfuric acid! That can be used to break down biomass to make cellulistic ethanol...or if your using BTL just toss it all in there.
Its amazing what can be done with lots of C and H and O and also the N and S
Reality is nothing is perfect. But change is not always bad despite it not always being good.
Posted by: fstvette78 | Jan 5, 2007 11:27:48 PM
Hi everyone,
How do you feel Obama compares with Vilsack on energy and the environment? I had some mixed feelings when I watched this:
http://www.cfr.org/publication/11767/energy_security_video.html
Maybe I'm being too hard on Vilsack. There were a few spots where I was genuinely impressed with what he said.
Posted by: netscrooge | Jan 6, 2007 12:32:56 AM
This blog once again performs the incredible by ignoring the economic implications of its own discussion. Although someone got it exactly right - it is better to burn off our carbon then the carbon that Osama and Hugie Chavez sells us. Which part of we have a three hundred billion current account deficit with foreigners born on top of oil swamps - do you not understand? Does anyone at all realize that we have a huge unemployment and industrial plant dissappearing problem here? Never mind Washington's unemployment statistics, take a drive through upstate New York or Brooklyn New York and see it there.
Yes algae CO conversion is a good solution, however algae is hard to grow in that quantity, surprise surprise, and still some years away. Some Cambridge biologists are getting close to solving that, but give them time. However do not let that stop us from CTL.
On the other hand, mopers and hand wringers, let's make perfect the enemy of good, since that is our best skill.
Posted by: calvino | Jan 6, 2007 1:28:25 AM
The reason coal to liquids is racing upright now is a new process discovered just a year or so ago dropped the cost by a ton. Thusits a coal rush.
nd of course politicians want to look like they are doing something so they are desperate to sign bills and fling money before the oil cmpanies build the plants anyway.
Posted by: wintermane | Jan 6, 2007 2:07:32 AM
Calvino:
Picture is not so grim. US adsorbed recently no less than 10 millions illegal’s workforce. Population (and economic might) is actually growing, not shrinking like in most developed countries. 300 B trade deficit means that US consumed these goods and services inside, instead of sending them overseas. Everybody knows this, and happily returning these 300 B back in US as investments. Now, it is vastly simplified picture, but so is yours. US is blessed with domestic consumer driven economy, to the awe of the rest of the world which economies are dependent on Uncle Sam who sometimes buy their products, sometimes not.
But getting rid of oil dependency from nations routinely spitting in your face, I agree, is the matter of dignity, not just economy.
Posted by: Andrey | Jan 6, 2007 2:19:30 AM
I would say they go for CTL instead of IGCC and BEV because there are over 100 million liquid fueled cars and virtually zero BEVs. This is just a guess, we would have to ask the Senators.
Posted by: SJC | Jan 6, 2007 2:54:09 AM
Ok, lets assume we do find a cost effective way to mass produce algae using the C02 from the CTL plant. What are you going to do with all the algae. Some people want to make bio-d and ethanol out of it. The carbon still goes in the air, though, when you burn the fuel. I guess you could bury it?
Posted by: JC | Jan 6, 2007 5:07:16 AM
We currently have almost zero CTL too, but I don't see that stopping the policymakers. Besides, building new vehicles to use electricity (which we have, and can get more of) fixes more problems than CTL.
What we have here is a huge failure of imagination.
Posted by: Engineer-Poet | Jan 6, 2007 5:57:08 AM
"it is better to burn off our carbon then the carbon that Osama and Hugie Chavez sells us."
That's a simple rationalization. How about developing/advancing NEW technology (a carbon tax) and informing the great consumers of the world of their narcissistic means?
Posted by: FYI co2 | Jan 6, 2007 6:49:44 AM
_There is a silver lining if many CTL plants (expensive) come online. These large companies have the means to invest in these capital intensive facilities. It also solves the chicken and egg problem of whether to finance/build the conversion plants first, or biomass production. Once algae biomass production is up and running, it will need facilities to process it. In short, these CTL plants could be converted to BTL plants. Excess waste heat could be exploited to dry the algae. Afterwards, the lipids/oils could be separated, then processes. They could make SVO, or biodiesel, or a 2nd Gen biofuel like NExBTL from these fats. The F-T (or other conversion process) could then turn leftovers into other chemicals (fuels). It may make old coal/electric companies into green ones, based on clean renewables, not fossil energy.
Posted by: allen_Z | Jan 6, 2007 7:34:06 AM
The preponderance of "support our troops" stickers are on SUVs. The people who display their socalled patriotism the loudest are also those who drive the big kahunas which suck up most of the oil which supports the Saudis who funnel money to the terrorists.
So, instead of making conservation our number one priority and switching to a car fleet which could cut our consumption in half or more, we come up with these schemes to perpetuate the notion that our desires for automotive fuel should be unlimited and not in any way constrained by the natural resources available to us.
Forget all this talk about sequestration and algae. It ain't gonna happen. We will sacrifice anything and everything to get that last drop of precious fluid for our giant machines to convey our overfat asses to the local convenience store and beyond.
Jerry Ford, and then Jimmy Carter recognized the problem decades ago. If we had had the foresight to continue their legacy, we wouldn't be having this discussion.
When Reagan was elected and he yanked Carter's solar panels off the White House, our long national nightmare began and the seeds of what Kunstler calls The Long Emergency were sown.
Let's face. We want it all and care about nothing except our own convenience and greed. If we have to tear up most of our land, destroy mountaintops, farmland, rivers, and all our glaciers to get what we want we will go there.
While I am not a big fan of technology to solve our problems, this rush to CTL will just perpetuate a technology which should be in the process of becoming obsolete, the ICE. While PHEVs and BEVs are not the be all and end all, they have the potential of having a much smaller carbon footprint than ICEs, especially if we move to smaller vehicles.
But really. The ultimate goal needs to be to get out of these damn vehicles and be in a position to walk, bicycle, and take the bus and rail when necessary. I discovered a really neat way to cut fuel use three decades ago; live close to work. Wherever I moved to because of my job, I made sure I lived close to work.
Posted by: t | Jan 6, 2007 7:34:32 AM
I read The Long Emergency by Kunstler and thought some of his points were good. He felt that the suburb was our biggest mistake and some might agree. However, his book struck me as a bit of doomsday and survivalist. If people want to be pessimistic and say the only way we can solve this problem is to go back to the land, then that is their choice. By the end of the book, he implies that we will be forced back to the land anyway evenually. I would like to believe that we can solve this problem working together...just my opinion.
Posted by: SJC | Jan 6, 2007 8:36:33 AM
It's nice to dream about idealized lifestyles where we all live near work, drive the smallest footprint vehicles, eat dried fruits, and have gigajules of free electricity to run everything.
But in a real world there are millions of elderly, retired, young and infirm people who cannot meet these ideal lifestyles. Families still have children to shuttle, commuters still choose to live in suburbs and rural areas.
Today it's difficult for the elderly to cross a street before the light turns red on them. Because the selfish designers choose time frames too short for all but the most healthy and physically fit. Talk about narcism.
Going green means showing some care and er... compassion for the Earth and its natural systems. Extending this compassion to the old and young and challenged members of society is... well, it's what you do when building toward idealism. Rome was not built in a day, nor will this enterprise.
Posted by: gr | Jan 6, 2007 8:55:12 AM
They do lip service to sequestration.
The last paragraph from the link in the main article:
"The Coal-to-Liquid Fuel Promotion Act of 2007 is a three-part, comprehensive effort to create a vibrant domestic CTL fuel market. First, this bill enables the Department of Energy to provide loan guarantees for construction and direct loans for the planning and permitting of CTL plants. Loan guarantees will encourage private investment and planning loans will help companies prepare a plant for construction. Second, this legislation will expand investment tax credits and expensing provisions to include coal-to-liquids plants, extend the Fuel Excise Tax credit, and expand the credit for equipment used to capture and sequester carbon emissions. These tax incentives build on the loans and loan guarantees by offering tax breaks during the multiple-year construction phase and during initial production at the plant. Third, this bill provides the Department of Defense the funding and authorization to purchase, test, and integrate these fuels into the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and military fuel supplies."
Posted by: matt | Jan 6, 2007 9:14:20 AM
Ultimately I think the whole question of sequestration is a diversion. At the end of the CTL process, you end up with a liquid hydrocarbon fuel that would be used in vehicles, and when burned it would release CO2 into the air.
To me the whole thing smells like a last-gasp hail-mary attempt to maintain the status quo.
Posted by: eric | Jan 6, 2007 9:21:14 AM
When the status quo is huge, will you be more sucessful with less side effects transitioning gradually or suddenly? History says gradual, continual change is the way. The odds of attaining, let alone suceeding in a sudden widespread change are low. That sudden shock could have side effects that you have not even possibly imagined.
Posted by: SJC | Jan 6, 2007 9:53:07 AM
WTF? This is the same Barack Obama that we've all been placing such great hopes on?
And now he wants to replace oil with... coal! WTF!
Do these people have any type of science understanding at all?
We are soooooo doomed people. so totally f**ked.
Posted by: Matt | Jan 6, 2007 10:15:30 AM
Technology will be the answer if there is an answer.
If you junked every car today you would not stop warming.All of the valiant efforts to limit co2 are and will come up short unless a large culling of the population is started today and eliminates 5 billion by the end of the year.
I do like the thinking of posters who envision this tech being supplanted in the future by successively better and cleaner tech.We need a starting point that would end with geoengineering that would take co2 out of atmosphere.We can then argue about where to set the thermostat.
Posted by: earl | Jan 6, 2007 10:44:35 AM
re pessimism abounds: I think my Grandfather said it best, "I learned to stop worrying after two world wars, the great depression, a global pandemic, the oil embargo, the cold war, the bomb, disco and rap ... I'm still here and I'm still happy" What can I say, he's very old.
Posted by: Neil | Jan 6, 2007 12:04:58 PM
As stated above, this is a re-introduction of previous legislation. Specifically, "U.S. Senate Bill S.3325 -- Coal-to-Liquid Fuel Promotion Act of 2006". The 2007 version may likely contain nearly-identical text. The 2006 version does make explicit mention of carbon emission capture/sequestration for purposes of inclusion into the available tax credit(s), as follows:
<-- S.3225 -- Sec. 48C(c)(1)(A):
"... (including any property which allows for the capture, transportation, or sequestration of by-products resulting from such process, including carbon emissions), ..." -->
Full text can be found here:
<-- http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c109:S.3325.IS: -->
HTH.
Posted by: Pete_P | Jan 6, 2007 1:18:59 PM
IGCC and CtL both have a gasification step at the start of the process. To date, US power companies haven't invested in fluidized bed gasifiers because of the ~10% increase in fixed cost, and no clear idea of long term costs (maintenance).
Overall, supporting CtL will at least put some history into the record for future buyers of IGCC plants.
The preferred answer to Carbon emissions reduction still seems to be broader, like a trading scheme, rather than trying to limit individual initiatives like this one.
Posted by: Ron Fischer | Jan 6, 2007 2:55:35 PM
Wabash River has put quite a bit of history into the record, and it's not a route to runaway GHG emissions.
Efficiency is the big deal here. The average car is roughly 15% efficient tank-to-wheels; add a CTL step at 50%, and you're down to 7.5% mine-to-wheels. If you burn coal in a converted IGCC plant like Wabash River, you'll get ~40% coal-to-grid; if you have 25% losses between grid to wheels, you'll get 30% throughput (losses from mine to coal heap are outside this, but probably very small). Now, can we or the world afford to mine 4 times as much coal to do the job via coal-to-liquids, or are we going to get sensible?
Posted by: Engineer-Poet | Jan 6, 2007 5:47:29 PM
What effect would all of this have on the price of coal? How much coal does it take to make a 42 gal barrel of oil?
It seems like the price of coal would be driven up quite a bit if we were to scale this out to meet a large percentage of our transportation fuel needs.
Posted by: Tripp | Jan 6, 2007 6:58:18 PM
Coal varies greatly in energy content, so it's impossible to name one figure for the CTL barrel-equivalent.
You're right that CTL would bid up the price of coal and keep it high. That's why coal companies and coal-state pols are creaming in their pants over it.
Posted by: Engineer-Poet | Jan 6, 2007 10:43:42 PM
how long before the USA starts to run out of coal, not long if every fool with a hummer starts to burn it
burn baby burn
Posted by: anti gravity | Jan 7, 2007 12:32:37 AM
How much coal does it take to make a 42 gal barrel of oil?
E-P is correct that there is no single number appropriate here. But you might get an idea from the energy density of liquid fuels, ~46 MJ/kg, vs the density of most coals, 15-25 MJ/kg. Anthracite is around 30 MJ/kg but we have little anthracite.
It seems like the price of coal would be driven up quite a bit if we were to scale this out to meet a large percentage of our transportation fuel needs.
For sure that "300 year reserve" of coal won't last nearly that long.
Posted by: cidi | Jan 7, 2007 8:49:30 AM
I think plasma conversion of waste to Ethanol,Butanol,Syndiesel is ideal. NYC produces about 50,000 Ton/Day of Municipal Solid Waste. Plasma conversion realeses the about 25-30% by weight hydrogen as H2. Startech is building a tire to ethanol facility at Tom's River,NJ. It will produce about 1,000,000 Gallons/Week of ethanol from tires. Treating MSW with plasma could displace 100% of our U.S. oil imports. Landfill Plasma to electricity could power the nation for 30 years and you get your Metals and Silica back. There's you answer!
www.startech.net
Posted by: Andy | Jan 7, 2007 12:14:10 PM
Obama is human. He DOES make mistakes. This is one.
Posted by: KJD | Jan 7, 2007 4:18:31 PM
If coal sells for $40 per ton and that ton can make the equivalent fuel of 2 barrels of oil and the oil costs 2 x $60 or $120, then it is no wonder that CTL is getting some attention.
Posted by: SJC | Jan 7, 2007 4:25:02 PM
The question is what we're going to get out of that ton.
Wabash River is 40% efficient; a fully modern IGCC plant would probably be 45-50% efficient. A ton of coal yielding 25 million BTU would produce 2930 kWh from Wabash River, enough to drive a Chevy Volt about 10,900 miles (assuming 6.5 hours charge @ 110 V 15 A yields 40 miles range). A 50% efficient IGCC plant would increase that to almost 13000 miles. The same coal converted to 2 barrels (84 gallons) of motor fuel would drive a 50 MPG car a mere 4200 miles.
Electric is the way to go.
Posted by: Engineer-Poet | Jan 7, 2007 11:38:41 PM
Earl: "All of the valiant efforts to limit co2 are and will come up short unless a large culling of the population is started today and eliminates 5 billion by the end of the year."
Yikes. Are you volunteering to go first?
Posted by: Robert Schwartz | Jan 8, 2007 10:21:21 AM
It comes down to reality. You can not wave your hand and suddenly convert 1000 coal plants to IGCC. You can not wave your other hand and convert 100 million cars into EVs. CTL may not be as efficient, but it works with what we have now. Making the transition is capital intensive and we generally pick the expedient method. We kind of all know that by now.
Posted by: SJC | Jan 9, 2007 9:20:07 AM
I don't have to wave my hand to build 17 million new light vehicles every year; that happens anyway. The question is whether we'll adapt the vehicles to our future energy sources, or the energy sources to the vehicles.
Electric vehicles are key to managing many problems beyond a shrinking supply of petroleum: greenhouse gases, noise and toxic emissions just begin the list. And I don't have to adapt any extant vehicles; they get driven less as they get older, and get removed from the fleet at an average age of around 17. Last, we can spend a trillion dollars on new CTL plants which are good for exactly one thing, or a few hundred billion on electric plants which can help power anything that uses electricity.
Betting our future on CTL is suicidal foolishness.
Posted by: Engineer-Poet | Jan 9, 2007 10:07:04 PM
The number of posts on this page voicing environmental concerns shows that there should be a sequestration effort linked to CTL. The CO2 stream you can get from a CTL plant can be compressed for geologic sequestration for about a $4 increase per barrell of fuel. Since CTL is economically viable with an oil price of about $40, we can afford to apply it. This makes CTL stand up in the CO2 arena to be better than conventional gas and diesel. CTL products out perform conventional fuels emissions of NOx, SOx, and particulates for use in vehicles as well. Concerns with expanded coal use and continued American lack of energy conservation are more than valid, but energy security is a very important issue and this will aid other alternative fuels in providing that. Don't hate on Obama for enhancing national security through energy security while helping his state make money on their coal. Well, actually, go ahead, I don't care. CTL is not the best or a singular alternative to gas, but its the best one currently available and we should do something because everyone else is (China).
P.S. All the algae talk is stupid.
P.P.S. Please make more efficient and/or electric cars or at least stop building gas guzzlers. (Maybe some really good diesel/electric hybrids optimized to run on high cetane FT products?)
Posted by: DOE Engineer | Jan 10, 2007 10:02:33 AM
Filling up a Honda Civic with CTL fuel makes driving it equivalent to driving a H3, from a global warming perspective.
It makes me think Obama isn't running for President, since this is a move that is good for only Illinois and Kentucky.
Posted by: O. Horse Brown | Jan 10, 2007 7:47:31 PM
Without carbon capture and sequestration, CTL can be nothing more than a short term bridge. Why spend hundreds of millions of dollars developing a technology that is just as bad for climate change as what it is meant to displace? Why not spend the hundreds of million of dollars developing a technology with lower emissions AND that gets the U.S. to use less oil from the Middle east AND employs Americans?
Being against the CTL proposal (as it is now) is not the "perfect being the enemy of the good" as netscrooge opined - using coal at all for anything is hardly perfect! Instead, going down the CTL road without addressing emissions ignores climate change issues for a singular focus on fears of terrorism.
One's position in this matter depends on what one thinks is the more pressing issue - climate change or U.S. oil imports funding terrorism. What compels my position is the simple fact that an American is less likely to be killed in a terrorist attack than they are to be struck by lighting; I am not afraid of terrorists and I live and work on Capitol Hill in Washington DC.
I say spend the money on a better solution - making oil irrelevant. Where would terrorists get their money then?
Posted by: Antony DiGiovanni | Jan 11, 2007 10:37:45 AM
Curious about people’s thoughts about this. Greenhouse gases are pouring into the atmosphere at astonishing rates from like 750 million automobiles, some 700 refineries, a billion cows and their poop, industry, tens of thousand of landfills, cement plants, and the like. And thousand of coal-fired power plants worldwide. None of those things appear to be vanishing. But there’s only like one CTL plant in Africa, tiny compared to most oil refineries. A few more others CTL plants are on the books, but for all practical purposes, its not really there, or at least, its massively dwarfed by fossil fuels used in power generation. I think the US plans to build 150 more coal-fired power plants in coming years, and China is building coal power plants at the rate of like one a week, and India probably close to that rate, and will probably exceed the US rate. So comparatively speaking. CTL isn’t the threat we face, because it isn’t here, the real threat is whats right in front of us. Coal electricity is marching on big time, its everywhere, it actually exists commercially on a wide scale, it growing by staggering amounts. And if we get the chance to buy real electric cars in the next ten years or so, we’re going to be charging them up with coal, natural gas, or nuclear-made electricity. I think the academic debate is worth having on CTL legislation, but its more horrendously urgent to debate legislation to reverse the trends on what we use to generate electricity. CTL hasn’t caused climate change - - the rest of this stuff has, it exists, and its getting worse.
Posted by: alisdaire | Jan 13, 2007 1:39:15 PM
Is there any form of fossil fuel energy that doesn't waste enormous amounts of water? Any uranium enrichment plants or nuclear power plants that don't? Any mines that don't?
There's are obvious reasons why Obama's State of Illiinois has more coal-fired plants and more nuclear power plants than any in the country. They include the Mississippi River, the Great Lakes, the Ohio River, Peabody Coal on the Ohio River, in Southern Indiana and Northern Kentucky, and USEC, the one operating uranium enrichment plant in the U.S., (privatized by Bill Clinton in 1997), on the Kentucky side of the Ohio in Paducah.
I am still staggered by the surprise proposed homicide announced to the Hopi and Diné people of Big Mountain/Black Mesa on January 3rd: SURPRISE! 1) Peabody will reopen and expand the mine, 2) SURPRISE! Peabody and the Salt River Project will reopen the Mojave Generating Station, filthiest plant west of the Pecos for the past 40 years and add scrubbers, 3) SURPRISE! Peabody will rebuild and reopen the 108-mile coal slurry line that already wasted half of the desert aquifer, effortlessly replenished by desert storms each year, then effortlessly filtered through desert sand. Before Peabody Coal wasted 52 quadrillion gallons of the N aquifer, if I calculate correctly; now they want the C aquifer as well.
Peabody applied for 6000 square acre feet/yr. at Big Mountain/Black Mesa. Sithe Global applied for 4500 square acre feet/yr. at Desert Rock, also on the northwestern Navajo Nation, leaving 450 square acre feet for the natives.
I've heard vague murmurings that advance men for Coal-To-Liquid Tech--ans whose could these be but Peabody Coal's?--have an agreement with the Hopi Tribal Council, which the people of Big Mountain/Black Mesa are now at odds with, like the Diné Navajo of the northwestern Navajo Reservation.
I think the mining and coalwashing alone are gonna waste a whole lot of the water left, and though I;ve got no #s, I suspect that whatever comes next will too. Anyone out there got any #s on that? If so, I'd like to have them; I got onto this site in searach of #s about the water cost of CTF because I'm writing something for a newspaper about Peabody's SURPRISE! proposed homicide on January 3rd, and the CTF legislation introduced, again, with more tax breaks, on Big Mountain/Black Mesa.
Also, does this tech exist anywhere in real form yet? I'm not an engineer or a scientist. --A.G.
Posted by: Ann Garrison | Jan 16, 2007 4:16:16 PM
