New York Times points to synfuel initiatives based on coal, and federal tax incentives attracting several companies. The Germans developed the Fischer-Tropsch technology to create diesel from coal during WWII. The big downside is increased CO2 emissions.
"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, to the Times. "There's a brown path and a green path to replacing oil, and Fischer-Tropsch fuel is definitely on the brown path." Search for New Oil Sources Leads to Processed Coal - New York Times (July 5, 2006).
Jeff Goodell contends that easy decisions to turn to coal fuel sources preserve the illusion that we can "drill and burn our way to prosperity" instead of pushing to the new, disruptive technologies of solar, biofuels and other renewable resources: "The biggest problem with our bounty of coal is not what it does to our mountains or the atmosphere, but what it does to our minds. It preserves the illusion that we don't have to change our lives. Given the profound challenges we face with the end of cheap oil and the arrival of global warming, this is a dangerous fantasy." Jeff Goodell - Our Black Future - New York Times (June 23, 2006)
Is America's addiction to burning oil going to be replaced by an addiction to burning coal?
Posted by dougsimpson at July 5, 2006 09:26 AM