I actually don't have a problem seeing some of my tax $$$ going to this kind of research. With enough desperate hot-shot Ph.D. candidates working on a problem with limited funding, pretty much anything is possible. With fuzzy science like ecology, evolutionary biology, and social science - there's a lot of spinning with statistics & conclusions that "suggest" this and that, usually with some hidden political objectives-but little or no real, pure science. With this kind of research, all the incentives are for refining and advancing a pre-established process; no results - no more funding.

Immediate funding for coal to liquid plants is very important. If there were many such plants in readiness, there would have been less speculation in the oil markets.

It is not an actual shortage of oil that has caused the high prices but un-hindered speculation in a market where the availability of competition is highly controlled by the US and other governments. The control of offshore drilling and oil shale leases are just two examples of how government limits the free market but allows speculation to be rampant.

No person or company that has any interest in any oil company should be allowed to invest in or produce alternate fuels or energy.

Even if they are mothballed for most of the time, CTL plants should be built in every coal mining area. They can use waste coal that is not worth shipping and produce low cost fuels. It is very convenient to forget that coal is just old bio-mass. ..HG..

Republican Congressmen Hal Rogers and Geoff Davis succeeded in pork barreling $1.426 million in federal funds to support research at the University of Kentucky Center for Applied Energy Research (CAER) on refining coal into liquid transportation fuels.

This well established coal to liquid technology, invented just after the First World War is not in need of refinement. In fact, its elimination is desirable and if it survives, hopefully the carbon cap that will be imposed on this coal process will redirect its technology toward nuclear process heat utilization.

@axil

I don't know much about this process, but it seems like there's a lot of room for improvement....they've been improving the ICE for 100+ years.

This CTL technology has a production efficiency of 20%. That means that it releases 6 times more CO2 per unit that fossil diesel releases. It is the worse green house gas culprit around. Gas to liquids is far more environ friendly.

CTL technology is also largely compatible with BTL.

In simple terms, if the energy for process heat and hydrogen comes from green electricity (Plasma – wind mills or solar or nuclear) that is good for GW, if that energy comes from coal, that is bad. This is true for both coal and biomass to liquid processes.