Coal in cars: great fuel or climate foe?

A key problem is that liquid from coal emits twice as much carbon as gasoline. Still, Washington likes the idea.

from the March 2, 2007 edition

Page 2 of 3

Page 1 | 2 | Page 3

Global-warming impact

In coal-rich Illinois, Senator Obama's support is more nuanced. Citing energy-security concerns, his bipartisan legislation would grant tax and other subsidies for development of CTL refineries. He also supports separate global-warming legislation that, if passed, would keep carbon emissions from CTL refineries under control, he says. But Obama's CTL bill does not mandate capture of carbon dioxide.

That stance is likely to put him at odds with many environmentalists, who argue that a move to CTL will worsen global warming. Manufacturing and burning a gallon of CTL fuel creates nearly double the greenhouse-gas emissions that a gallon of gasoline does, they say.

"We want more energy security, too, but we're fighting this coal-to-liquids concept because it's just so bad for global warming," says Elizabeth Martin-Perera, a climate policy analyst with the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), a Washington environmental group. "It takes us from the frying pan into the fire."

Plans for US plants

At least nine coal-to-liquids facilities are now in the planning stages, including one each in Illinois, Pennsylvania, and Wyoming that already have significant funding lined up and are slated to begin production by 2009, according to the National Energy Technology Laboratory.

If all nine plants were built, they could produce about 3 billion gallons of fuel a year – not enough to meet the president's goal. But if federal tax incentives and state subsidies kick-start the industry, coal-based fuel production could soar to 40 billion gallons a year by 2025 – or about 10 percent of forecast oil demand that year, the National Coal Council reported to the Department of Energy (DOE) last year.

A key question is whether those plants will capture the greenhouse gases they produce and bury them underground. If they don't, the plants will pump millions of tons of CO2 into the atmosphere annually, environmentalists say. Even if gases were pumped underground, CTL fuel, when burned in an engine, would still send about 8 percent more CO2 skyward than a gallon of gasoline, a landmark 2003 Princeton University study found.

1 | Page 2 | 3 | Next Page