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Air Force Use of Liquid Coal & Tar Sands Fuels Illegal
by Stacy Feldman - Jan 30th, 2008
The Air Force has been investing big in liquefying coal to use as a staple jet fuel. It’s also been staging a malicious PR campaign to trick the press and the public into believing that coal-to-liquid is clean energy, when it’s not. Not by far.
Could be a big mistake.
Because apparently the Air Force is now in direct violation of the energy bill that was signed by President Bush on December 19, 2007. That law explicitly forbids federal agencies to use "alternative" fuels that are dirtier than conventional ones. And Reps. Henry A. Waxman (D-California) and Danny D. Davis (D-Illinois) have made it their business as members of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform to air the Air Force's dirty laundry.
From Section 526 of the law in question:
No Federal agency shall enter into a contract for procurement of an alternative or synthetic fuel, including a fuel produced from nonconventional petroleum sources, for any mobility-related use, other than for research or testing, unless the contract specifies that the lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions associated with the production and combustion of the fuel supplied under the contract must, on an ongoing basis, be less than or equal to such emissions from the equivalent conventional fuel produced from conventional petroleum sources.
Liquefied coal doesn’t even come close to meeting that standard. It emits twice the amount of greenhouse gas emissions as regular jet fuel.
And that's why Waxman and Davis have asked the Secretary of Defense Robert Gates for immediate answers on how exactly his department plans to comply with the law. Given that the Air Force has already broken it.
Here's the full letter (pdf).
And here’s the crux of it:
This provision ensures that federal agencies are not spending taxpayer dollars on new fuel sources that will exacerbate global warming. It was included in the legislation in response to proposals under consideration by the Air Force to develop coal-to-liquid fuels. As you may know, coal-to-liquid fuels are estimated to produce almost double the greenhouse gas emissions of the comparable conventional fuel. The provision is also applicable to fuels derived from tar sands, which also produce significantly higher greenhouse gas emissions than are produced by comparable fuel from conventional petroleum sources.
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I have a question that seems to be left out of all this CO2 hooey. Is the CO2 that is produced when sugar is fermented into yuckanol (ethanol) factored into the carbon foot print?
Ethanol is not the answer for our fuel problems unless they make it drinkable so we can just get drunk and forget our troubles. I don't care what it's made from it nets less MPG in the vehicle that uses it, FFV's that a large portion of people can't afford to buy and so far the people who were dumb enough to buy one are getting lass MPG so they are spending more money to travel the same distance even though the price at the pump for E-85 is lower than gasoline. This begs the question how does burning more to go the same distance help with the problem? My answer is, it doesn't, all it does is create more revenue for the government to spend on the wrong things. And by producing more by fermentation to keep up with demand we create more CO2. Even if they can get the price at the pump low enough to overcome the lower MPG they will never get it low enough to overcome the cost of the FFV to use it. Ethanol as a fuel is a bad investment. Automobiles are big money pits allready and by fueling them with ethanol they become even bigger. There is a ethanol production facility planed near Reno NV that will make syngas form garbage and then turn that into ethanol. Cool we reduced the CO2 by not fermenting, but syngas can be turned into synthitic petroleum that can be futher refined into fuel we can all use in what ever money pit we are paying for allready.
The enviroment aside, there is a bigger problem that is only slightly covered in all the fighting over the cleanliness of any fuel we use and that is money. Last time I checked (7/1/08) coal to liquid can be produced in large quantities for around $50 per barrel and crude oil is selling for over $100 per barred as of 8/23/08. Wow look at that we can produce jobs in our own country that keeps our money in our country and save money doing it. As a taxpayer (The Air Force is taxpayer funded right?) I demand that we use the less expensive fuel and use the money we save there to fix other things, such as the bridges and roads, or perhaps the education system. Don't you think that if we better educate future generations we will get better soulitions faster? The government has us trillions of dollars in debt. We are taught in school that debt is bad. Did we elect people who didn't go to school? Or is the school teaching us wrong?
I know I have only asked a few of the necessary questions and have answered fewer of them. I think I have more answers on some things and I know I have soulitions to more of the problems I have pointed out. I am not willing to share them at this time as I stand to not get my share of the money they will produce if I share them publicly. If anyone is interested they can E-mail me at tdamericap@gamil.com and a personal meeting can be arranged so we can talk in confidentiality about them.
Think Different America Please.
C.A.N.
Global warming is cooling off
Section 526 as quoted is quite ludicrous. Water vapor is a much stronger greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, representing nearly 95% of the greenhouse gas effects. The idea that CO2 is such a big contributor to greenhouse gas effects is true "aside from water vapor". Fortunately for civilization, there is a LOT of water vapor. H2O concentration can vary enormously over time and space, overwhelming the 3.5% or so effect of semi-permanent CO2, that includes the natural concentration.
As the Section is stated, hydrogen power, including fuel cells and combustion, would be off limits, even if generated with zero emissions nuclear power plants, because the product of hydrogen power is water, which has a higher proportion of greenhouse gas effects than a mixture of water and CO2, as from petroleum combustion.
For those who care to look, they would find that temperature is not correlated with carbon dioxide concentration. It is highly correlated with solar activity and is locally correlated with development (compare the temperature of an Orange County parking lot today to the citrus grove in the same location 50 years ago), which skews the results. Glacial melting is strongly affected by particulate pollution that increases solar absorption rates, a human effect, but not from CO2. The fraction of a degree increase in temperatures over the past 100 years is within the uncertainty of the earlier measurements. So, the idea that the world is warming at all is not even sound. The computer climate models are "validated" against each other. If they produce average results, they are called good (interestingly, that means if a model does not show increased temperatures, it is called bad). When compared to something like real data, the computer models fail miserably. They fail to predict current conditions, starting from the past, with overprediction of temperatures, meaning the future gloom is grossly exaggerated. They also ignore other heat sources. Conduction from the hot earth interior is ignored by the models, a reasonably good assumption over land, but geothermal conduction over 100 years can be shown to cause about 0.02 deg C increase in the ocean temperature, although this too ignores convection (plate movements, volcanoes, hydrothermal vents), which can be locally substantial. And for the true believers, take note, it was warmer in the middle ages than now, the world is currently cooling off, and the Antarctic ice sheet is thickening even as the ice shelves sitting in the ocean are melting.
Human caused global warming is a fraud brought to us by researchers who can only get grants if they cry the sky is falling, former politicians who stand to make billions of dollars in new carbon trading schemes, and anarchistic Luddites.
Coal to liquid is a great idea, especially if the hydrogen generation energy is sourced from nuclear power to save the coal for the hydrocarbons. We have a lot of coal. Let's insist on it.
Coal to fuel
Way to go Stephen Johnson Pres. of American Clean Coal Fuels.... in your put down
of the anti-Coal-fuel Air Force blog of Stacy the ignorant liberal Rosie O'Donnald self righteous obstructionist.
You know, I have read for several years this could be done cleanly, but I
tend to read professional and trade journals. However, I have read almost NOTHING
in the popular press about coal to fuel as the biggest contender for the
next few hundred years. Is it cost competitive at this point in time ?
If it is cost competitive, it is an obvious answer right here in our laps. You
Stephen, need to do more in the PR department for your organization. Much
more...... to educate the masses so they get behind it.
Jonathan Swift
I'm a liberal
And I'm stupid enought ot believe in anthropgenic global warming. Also I hate the US military so this is killing two soldiers with one jihadi bullet funded by buying Saudi oil.
Oh, and I worship algore-hiss even though he lives in a mansion that uses $20,000 in electricity, flits like a flit-boy around the world in a Gulfstream private jet and his son is constantly involved in high speed chases while smoking pot.
Yeap, that's me...the average Democrat.
Not all coal-derived synthetic fuels are so bad
Stacy, sadly, you are misinformed on the lifecycle greenhouse gas footprint of coal-derived synthetic fuels.
In your article you state that coal-derived synthetic aviation fuels emit twice the GHGs of conventional fuels (implying that ALL coal-derived synthetic fuels produce double carbon emissions). That is not correct. It is true that in the dirtiest and most irresponsible implementations of this process, none of which we will likely see developed in the US, with absolutely no emissions controls whatsoever, this process can produce a fuel with close to a double carbon footprint. What is also true is that this same process is capable of capturing and sequestering the process CO2, and additionally, this same process is able to accept biomass inputs either as a blend with, or totally replacing coal. When carbon capture and sequestration is combined with biomass blending, as is the case in at least four of the top synthetic fuels projects currently in development today, the fuels that this industry produces will deliver a substantial reduction in lifecycle CO2 emissions, and indeed even have the capability of producing lifecycle carbon neutral, or even carbon negative diesel and jet fuels. This is possible today with proven commercial off-the-shelf technology, and has the potential of achieving a greenhouse footprint superior to that of what the observers believe that even cellulosic ethanol might be able to do in 10 years.
The other half of the story (which is somehow always conspicuously omitted by those such as yourself who are concerned about the climate and like to take NRDC-produced soundbites and throw them out there as yet another example of "look how bad coal is") is that the US synthetic fuels industry, as a whole, is on the leading edge of producing and delivering fuels that result in dramatic reductions, or perhaps even eventually elimination of, lifecycle GHG emissions.
Everyone I talk to in the US synthetic fuels industry is sincerely interested in being part of the solution on climate change, and even eventually second-generation renewable fuels. By repeating factually incorrect information, you and others in the climate community are not helping that process.
We welcome the scrutiny and oversight that Waxman and Davis and others are providing, as we agree that responsible development practices are crucial to the future of the synthetic fuels industry. We are committed to and capable of delivering reductions in lifecycle carbon emissions.
If you are really serious about your mission of addressing climate change, perhaps you could even be troubled to take the time to do your research, find out what this process is really truly capable of, and THEN deciding whether or not to try and become an obstacle to its further development in the US. Because from where I am sitting, particularly in light of the mounting evidence of lifecycle GHG issues with biofuels (which were conveniently not covered by the Waxman/Davis letter) coal-and-biomass-derived synthetic fuels appear the be the most scalable, technologically proven, least-impactful, infrastructure-compatible option that we have for the implantation of LARGE SCALE alternative fuels production, particularly for aviation, within the domestic US, with a reduced or eliminated GHG footprint.
Also, the document that you link to was signed by U.S. Rep Tom Davis, (R-VA-11th district), not Rep. Danny Davis of Illinois, as indicated in your article.
Best Regards,
Stephen Johnson
President
American Clean Coal Fuels
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