Personally I’d Go With Biofuels Instead, But That’s Just Me

The U.S. Air Force needs a high-performance fuel for its jets, but it also wants to get said fuel domestically. What to do?

Their idea: Convert coal to oil fuel. Not everyone is thrilled:

The Air Force wants to build at its Malmstrom base in central Montana the first piece of what it hopes will be a nationwide network of facilities that would convert domestic coal into cleaner-burning synthetic fuel.Air Force officials said the plants could help neutralize a national security threat by tapping into the country’s abundant coal reserves. And by offering itself as a partner in the Malmstrom plant, the Air Force hopes to prod Wall Street investors — nervous over coal’s role in climate change — to sink money into similar plants nationwide.

“We’re going to be burning fossil fuels for a long time, and there’s three times as much coal in the ground as there are oil reserves,” said Air Force Assistant Secretary William Anderson. “Guess what? We’re going to burn coal.”

Tempering that vision, analysts say, is the astronomical cost of coal-to-liquids plants. Their high price tag, up to $5 billion apiece, would be hard to justify if oil prices were to drop. In addition, coal has drawn wide opposition on Capitol Hill, where some leading lawmakers reject claims it can be transformed into a clean fuel. Without emissions controls, experts say coal-to-liquids plants could churn out double the greenhouse gases as oil.

“We don’t want new sources of energy that are going to make the greenhouse gas problem even worse,” House Oversight Committee Chairman Henry Waxman, D-Calif., said in a recent interview.

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“Is it a viable technology? Certainly it is. The challenge seems to be getting the first couple (of plants) done,” said industry analyst Gordon Howald with Calyon Securities. “For a company to commit to this and then five years later oil is back at $60 — this becomes the worst idea that ever happened.”

Only two coal-to-liquids plants are now operating worldwide, all in South Africa. A third is scheduled to come online in China this year, said Corey Henry with the Coal-to-Liquids Coalition.

The Air Force is adamant it can advance the technology used in those plants to turn dirty coal into a “green fuel,” by capturing the carbon dioxide and other, more toxic emissions produced during manufacturing.

However, that would not address emissions from burning the fuel, said Robert Williams, a senior research scientist at Princeton University. To do more than simply break even, the industry must reduce the amount of coal used in the synthetic-fuel blend and supplement it with a fuel derived from plants, Williams said.