Everybody's favorite Dem governor, Brian Schweitzer of Montana, is pushing commercial adoption of the Fischer-Tropsch process, which would convert America's vast reserves of coal into synthetic diesel fuel or heating oil. This would burn cleaner than petrodiesel, defund autocratic terrorist-supporting regimes in the Middle East, etc. BUT . . . the New York Times reports today it would also vastly increase carbon dioxide emissions, UNLESS some kind of carbon-sequestration technology is adopted.
Here's the full article:
http://www.nytimes.com/...
Excerpts:
"Producing fuels from coal generates far more carbon dioxide, which contributes to global warming, than producing vehicle fuel from oil or using ordinary natural gas. And the projects now moving forward have no incentive to capture carbon dioxide beyond the limited amount that they can sell for industrial use. . . .
"Unless the factory captures the carbon dioxide created during the process of turning coal into diesel fuel, the global warming impact of driving a mile would double.
"`It's a potential disaster for the environment if we move in the direction of trying to create a big synfuel program based on coal to run our transportation fleet,' said Daniel A. Lashof, of the Natural Resources Defense Council. `There's a brown path and a green path to replacing oil, and Fischer-Tropsch fuel is definitely on the brown path.'
"But the Energy Department sees potential. In March, the Energy Secretary, Samuel K. Bodman, said in a speech that making diesel fuel or jet fuel from coal was `one of the most exciting areas' of research and could be crucial to the President's goal of cutting oil imports. He said that loan guarantees enacted in last summer's energy bill might be used for Fischer-Tropsch diesel fuel. . . .
"Robert Williams, a senior research scientist at Princeton, said `it's a step backward' to operate a plant like Rentech's without capturing the carbon. `It almost doubles the emission rate,' he said.
"Mr. Ramsbottom also sees the carbon dioxide problem. `The worldwide production of Fischer-Tropsch fuels is going to ramp up dramatically, and carbon sequestration is on everybody's mind,' he said. But the geology of this part of Illinois is not suitable for sequestering the carbon dioxide from these plants. Building a pipeline would be expensive and difficult to justify while carbon emissions are not taxed, experts say."