200 years based upon what rate of consumption? Does that figure include using coal as a transortation fuel? What about the environmental costs of pumping even more CO2 into the atmosphere? Where's the energy going to come from to convert the coal to oil? Coal to Oil on a large scale would probably drive the cost of coal pretty high. How much does a tonne of coal cost? I seem to recall that it takes about 2.5 tonnes of coal to make a barrel of oil? I'm not sure what the energy input is. I can't imagine that this process would be anywhere near energy positive. It's probably very negative. Much worse than corn ethanol I would guess. The comparison to cellulose ethanol would be very unfavorable to this process.

Of course, these economics still exclude the environmental costs. The increases from a growing demand for both stationary power generation as well as transportation fuel would translate into a tremdous increase in CO2 emissions. Converting our coal reserves to oil is a horrible idea. It's not sustainable and there are better alternatives.

Am I reading this right? Woolsey says "incentives should be made for the alternatives (he presented) by pulling the money for fuel cell development?"

His views on plug-ins make sense. If I drive 12000 miles a year on my vehicle, this equates to ~33 miles per day. Since my daily commute is roughly 26 miles a day, I could easily tolerate this range. A plug-in-hybrid which allows full electrical propulsion for at least 30-40 miles would substantially decrease my gasoline usage. Just wish it were possible!

Does anyone know that the rough coal-to-liquids energy balance is? A quick google search just gave me nothing but corn-ethanol energy balances.

1. First of all, America is virtually energy independent. The foreign dependence is on liquid transportation fuels only. So natural gas, wind, photovoltaic and alike are irrelevant.
2. Coal-to-liquid is good technology, but expensive and polluting. Gas-to-liquid is much cheaper and cleaner. But it is still not particularly economical. And both of them have nothing to do with oil dependency: there are plenty of much cheaper coal and NG recourses everywhere in the world than in US.
3. Biofuels such as corn ethanol and vegetable oil are economical and energy balance nonsenses and are just the way to give cash to farmers. In last case for farmers of Malaysia, who begin to dominate US biodisel market with their palm oil.
4. The highest efficiency of conversion of solar energy to biomass energy in plants is less then 3%. Good photovoltaic panels convert 30% (to electricity, thought). Growing of crops or algae for energy and fuel production is a pipe dream of 19 century pastoralists.
5. The only true way to economically viable domestic production of biofuels are waste-to-fuel technologies, such as cellulose ethanol and waste oil refining. Wastes should be treated any way, no matter the oil crude price on the market, and there are a lot of agricultural, livestock, forestry, gardening, and constructional wastes around country.
6. Plug in capability should be made mandatory for US-sold hybrids, but I wouldn’t count a lot on it. Most of America drivers do not care once a month to inflate their tires (safety, ride, and 5% fuel consumption penalties), let alone plug-in their car every evening.
7. It is not possible to somehow significantly decrease weight of cars - less then 2000lb anyway, without putting life of their riders at risk , because there are too much tremendously heavy vehicles on American roads right now. Any collision of SUV and 1000lb car will lead to car's occupants death just because of shear g-force, no matter how strong is the car body. What must be done is to mandate that every new model year heavy-weights should be 5% lighter.
8. As an emergency measure US government should phase-in duty on all imported in US oil. Conveniently enough, Canada and Mexico (but not Venezuela) will be excluded from duty because of NAFTA agreement.

Yet more ethanol bashing...obviously, some missed one of the major points in this article, which was best summed up by R. James Woolsey, "The effects of these policies are multiplicative. All should be pursued since it is impossible to predict which will be fully successful or at what pace, even though all are today either beginning commercial production or are nearly to that point."

Too many exhaust far too much energy trying to promote a certain greenER (than petroleum) technology at the expense of others. I think everyone would agree that some have more long term potential, but anything that is an improvement over petroleum is a worthwhile endeavor. Often overlooked is time to market. Why wait for the perfect technology that would take 20 years to deploy on a mass scale? What happens in the meantime - we do nothing?

The fact that so many ethanol studies were so all over the board should have lead people to believe that many were not that credible, such as the infamous Pitzkel and Pimental studies. The first credible information I've seen was an analysis of many of these earlier attempts by UCAL Berkeley,

http://www.greencarcongress.com/2006/01/uc_berkeley_stu.html

I have come around to the view that ethanol, while not a cure all, is an improvement over oil and should be pursued without putting all one's eggs in one basket. We should pursue it but not think that it excuses all sins like horrible gas mileage. It will have negative impacts, like everything else, and so should be pursued with some prudence with an eye to its ecological effects on the land and water.

I also agree that the key thing is that we need to pursue alternatives immediately without pissing around with ten more years of studies. DOE and this administration loves to study but is lame when it comes to actually funding something in a way that will cause adoption on a widespread basis.

We need PHEVs now, not in five years and not in ten years. While they will improve, we shouldn't be waiting until the perfect battery comes along. But this will not happen just based on voluntary action. We need to do whatever is necessary to get people out of their guzzlers and into these alternative vehicles now. But it won't happen because we are too busy giving tax breaks to the rich and spending hundreds of billions of dollars on war. Those are our priorities, folks, and all this talk about "addicted to oil" is pure bullshit if the money is not put where the mouth is.

Regarding Plug-in Hybrids, I think people are more likely to plug-in than one might suspect if it's convenient since it could save them the hassle of filling up at the gas station as often.

Regarding lighter vehicles, there is going to be a movement towards somewhat lighter vehicles among SUVs because of the recent change in CAFE standards that classifies a vehicle as a truck based on crash-worthiness instead of on weight. This removes the penalty for making lighter truck and SUVs.

Despite all the losses, a PHEV is still more efficient than a conventional ICE vehicle. Losing energy is common to all vehicle types. The fact that you have outlined the energy losses from the electic approach means nothing out of context.

Just like ethanol, PHEVs are likely not the final solution, but certainly, better than what we have. Yes, much energy is lost by the time it makes it to the wheels. However, the agreed well-to-wheel efficiency of a gasoline ICE is just a little bit above 10%.

Again, the point is that we have the infrastructure to start doing this now, and it would help the environment AND our economy (the money stays within our borders). The naysayers will point out that we don't have the proper "buffers" to store large amounts of electricity, but the grid consists of plenty of facilities that can vary their output, with plenty of capacity to meet the small-scale increases that would occur right away. Additionally, the batteries in the cars collectively become the storage repository.

"Am I reading this right? Woolsey says "incentives should be made for the alternatives (he presented) by pulling the money for fuel cell development?"

Yip. Reasons:
1. By investing exclusively in fuel cell/hydrogen this administration is betting the house on a single technology. If things don't work out, $trillions went to waste. In the mean time, development on all other technologies grind to a halt.
2. You cannot force a technology ripe. California tried this with the electric car. In the end, they had to back out.
3. Cost: Fuel cell cars currently cost ~$1 million a piece. Although increased production would reduce this, it is unlikely that a 100-fold reduction (to make FC competitive with existing technology) would happen anytime soon.
4. Of all energy carriers, hydrogen is one of the worst: hard to store and transport, inefficient to manufacture and transport, explosive in a very wide range of concentrations in air.
5. It is not typically clean, or even carbon-free. The #1 source of hydrogen today is natural gas, i.e.
CH4 + O2 -> CO2 + 2H2
You could make hydrogen out of clean energy. But why waste >50% of your clean energy to convert it to something dangerous and hard to handle?

It should be noted that the Roomba vaccuming robot automatically docks itself in order to recharge. It is pretty evident that a charging station could be developed for placement in a garage so that the car would automatically charge itself each night without owner intervention.

Tripp
I did some calcs on that 2.5 tons of coal per 1 barrel of oil figure. According to this site
http://users3.ev1.net/~cfmoore/fuel/oil-vs-coal.htm
a midrange conversion is 4 barrels of oil in a ton of coal. I assume that is the 100% efficiency figure. Therefore CTL uses 10 equivalent barrels to get 1 actual, a thermal efficiency of 10%. This suggest the oft quoted figure of merely double CO2 emissions is industry spin. Not only is CTL inefficient but remember even with carbon capture at the plant what comes out of the tailpipe is carbon that was safely underground.