'Liquid coal' is a dangerous gamble
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In trying to develop a policy of "energy independence" Congress and the Bush administration are in danger of embarking upon a huge and costly gamble, a gamble that involves producing transportation fuels from coal.
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Peter J. Wray, co-chair of the Conservation Committee for the Allegheny Group of the Sierra Club, lives in Churchill (pjwray@verizon.net).
With our large quantity of domestic coal there is little doubt that we will be using some amount of coal to generate electricity for years to come, even though we will have to reduce its carbon dioxide emissions if we are to address global warming.
What is of more immediate concern is the rush by some in Congress to spend billions of dollars on plants intended to convert coal into a liquid fuel. Manufactured by first converting coal into a gas, liquid coal requires huge inputs of both coal and energy. In fact, one ton of coal produces only two barrels of liquid fuel.
Liquid coal is a dangerous economic gamble. There are currently no operating liquid coal plants in the U.S., and the industry is asking for billions in government handouts and subsidies to kick start a new industry. Estimates by the Department of Energy have put the construction cost of each liquid coal plant at $7 billion. Taxpayers were forced to gamble on liquid coal synfuels once before and shouldn't be forced to lose billions once again.
Being left behind in the liquid coal rush is the fact that liquid coal produces double the global warming emissions as regular gasoline. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, even if the carbon released during production was captured and stored, liquid coal would still release more global warming pollution than regular gasoline.
Liquid coal would also cause a range of environmental problems beyond global warming. More than four gallons of water are needed for every gallon of liquid coal produced, threatening our limited water supplies. Also, if we were to replace only 10 percent of our nation's transportation fuels with liquid coal we would have to increase coal mining by over 40 percent.
Instead of funneling billions into a new, dirty industry, we should be investing in energy efficiency and renewable energy technologies that exist today and can help us solve global warming. It's time to invest in the clean energy sources that will create hundreds of thousands of new good-paying jobs across the country.
Liquid coal, touted as a solution to our dependence on oil, is arguably the dirtiest, most expensive and most dangerous energy gamble we could take.
First Published June 12, 2007 6:56 pm
