Making oil from coal is bad for Montana?

[4dsc]

http://www.billingsgazette.net/articles/2006/07/20/opinion/guest/50-guestopinion.txt

Gov. Brian Schweitzer is touting coal-to-liquid plants as the solution to our current energy problems. While we are as appalled as everyone at rising gas prices and our growing dependence on foreign oil, we believe that no solution to our oil problem should come at the expense of destroying Montana's air, land and water, as well as accelerating global warming. There are quicker, cheaper and faster solutions.

This idea has three major flaws.

First, the process is incredibly expensive. You need to spend over $6 billion just to build one plant, which would produce 80,000 barrels a day - hardly a cost-effective solution when the U.S. consumes more than 21 million barrels a day.

Second, coal-to-diesel requires lots of water, about five gallons of water for every gallon of diesel fuel - not a particularly good long-term strategy in an area that is dealing with drought and water shortages, which will only increase with global warming.

Third, the total carbon dioxide emissions from coal-to-diesel are about double that of conventional diesel. Half the emissions are from the plant, and while you can in theory capture and store that carbon underground, it is expensive. Also, permanent leak-free solutions are not yet proven. And even if the carbon is captured at the plant, you are still left with diesel fuel that is burned in a vehicle and emitted out the tailpipe. We need to reduce our carbon emissions, and coal-to-diesel will increase them. It is not a good use for billions and billions of dollars.

[papau]

1. China is also rejecting idea

http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/37330/newsDate/19-Jul-2006/story.htm

China to Ban Small Scale Coal-to-Liquid Plants

(no small scale projects converting coal to liquids due to strain on water supply, and no approval of plants under 3 million tonnes per year (tpy) to process coal into transportation fuels, or projects under 1 million tpy to convert coal into methanol, plus plants under 1 million tpy to produce dimethyl ether (DME), a diesel substitute derived from coal, and projects to make olefins from coal under 600,000 tpy will also be banned)
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"All these projects have never counted in the environmental cost. Once oil prices collapse, they would all be doomed," said Yan Kefeng, of Cambridge Energy Research Associates (CERA).

Coal-to-oil plants, for instance, produce large amounts of carbon dioxide. And all coal liquefaction projects are highly water consuming.

"Water resource would be a main deterring factor for the coal liquefaction sector. It's also a main deterrent to China's economic and social development," said the report, adding that water resource per capita in China's coal-producing areas is one-tenth of the national average. <snip>

The chemical (methanol) is used in some Chinese provinces to blend into gasoline, which are at record-high prices. But the liquid, already banned in some states in the United States, corrodes engines, said CERA's Yan.

[jwirr]

3. While visiting the Cheyenne Reservation one young activist

asked "How long will it take to dig the whole mountain chain up so we can keep our hair dryers?" Now I also wonder what the effect on the weather would be if those mountains were lowered.

[LiviaOlivia]

2. The Return Of Nazi Oil

The Return Of Nazi Oil
Frank O'Donnell
July 19, 2006


Frank O'Donnell is president of Clean Air Watch, a 501(c)3 nonpartisan, nonprofit organization aimed at educating the public about clean air and the need for an effective Clean Air Act.

Once upon a time, Hitler’s Nazis found themselves in a jam: how to fight a world war with meager oil reserves— especially after the debacle of the Russian Front and the loss of those former Soviet oil fields? The answer was to convert German coal into liquid fuel for the Luftwaffe and those Panzer tanks. (No, this plot line is not courtesy of Mel Brooks. In fact, General George Patton siphoned off some of this fuel from captured German vehicles and used it to race towards Germany in 1944.)

This expensive coal-to-liquid process was later used by South Africa to meet its energy needs during its isolation under apartheid.

And now what some people refer to as “Nazi fuel” is back—thanks in part to high oil prices and lobbying by groups that stand to profit its use in the United States. Former Republican congressman Bob Livingston was paid was paid more than $200,000 last year to lobby for federal loan guarantees for the North American branch of the South Africa-based Sasol corporation, which is trying to peddle this process.

Using this coal-to-liquid fuel is also an integral recommendation of a new report by the Southern States Energy Board , a collection of governors, state lawmakers and big polluters. They are trying to argue that their parochial interests—including promoting more coal mining—are synonymous with the national interest on energy issues.

But the fact is their interests are not the same as the American public’s interests—which is anxious for sustainable solutions to our dependence on oil.

~snip~

http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2006/07/19/the_return_of_nazi_oil.php

[Strelnikov_]

4. Bad For Us All, And Should Be Limited To Use In The Transition

to domestic renewable energy resources.

That said, we all know what will happen.

With the unrestrained free market approach to energy infrastructure, and the prejudice for fossil fuels by the current political structure, we will convert coal until it becomes unviable economically.

When given the choice of sustainable domestic or unsustainable but cheaper imported, the consumers vote Wal-Mart. I see no way the energy infrastructure dynamic will be any different.

The SUV's must roll.


On edit: CTL plants could be mothballed once the transition is made, ready for reactivation in the event of interruptions to the sustainable energy infrastructure (droughts).

[NNadir]

5. I don't even think we should bother with "transitional" use of FT

processes.

There is nothing really to gain by such a "transition."

The depletion of oil is a tremendous opportunity. The requirement to change our infrastructure offers us many possibilities other than petroleum mimetics, especially petroleum mimetics manufactured from fossil fuels.

Let's just cut to the chase.