Energy Firms Come to Terms With Climate Change

Frequently asked questions about synthetic fuel
On November 2, 2004 Brian was elected as Montana's first Democratic governor since 1988. Brian Schweitzer became the 23rd Governor of the great state of Montana on January 3, 2005. Brian earned a Bachelor of Science degree in International Agronomy from Colorado State University, and later earned a Master of Science degree in Soil Science from Montana State University.

Montana Govenor, Brian Schweitzer, is one of the smartest experts on global warming solutions.

His answers to Frequently asked questions about synthetic fuel

Montana is actively pursuing development of ultra-clean coal technology in the areas of our major coal deposits in central and eastern Montana. The technology to convert coal into synthetic petroleum products or natural gas has existed for almost a century, and modern versions of this technology offers great promise for reducing American dependence on foreign oil and developing Montana's natural resources in a responsible manner. Below are answers to some basic questions about coal gasification and coal liquefaction.

What are synthetic fuels?

Synthetic fuel, also known as synfuel or Fischer-Tropsch liquids, is fuel such as diesel and jet fuel that is made from coal, natural gas or biomass, instead of oil. These are clean--burning, high-performing fuels that run in existing engines.

What is coal gasification? What is IGCC?

Unlike conventional coal burning plants that ignite the coal and send pollutants up a smokestack and into the air, synfuel plants gasify coal. This conversion takes place in a contained reaction and creates syngas, a mixture of gases which then can be made into liquid fuel. As an alternative to liquid fuel production, syngas can be upgraded to natural gas and sold on the market or can be used directly as fuel for a power plant. Plants using syngas are known as Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle (IGCC) plants and are among the cleanest types of electricity generators.

Why are synfuels cleaner than traditional fuels?

When coal is gasified, rather than burned as at conventional coal plants, impurities such as sulfur and mercury can be stripped out of the gas stream, instead of otherwise being emitted into the air. The resulting fuels burn virtually free of these pollutants. Sulfur-free fuel means less smog and acid rain, among many other benefits.

What is Carbon Sequestration?

In addition to removing pollutants such as mercury and sulfur, the gasification process allows carbon dioxide (CO2), the leading global warming agent, to be removed with little difficulty from the waste stream. Once separated, the CO2 can be stored permanently underground, buried deep in the earth and stored much like it was stored as coal. This is known as "carbon capture and sequestration" and is strongly supported by leading environmental scientists and global warming experts. In fact, there is a market for injecting carbon dioxide underground. Oil fields use CO2 to revive depleted oil wells, pumping the gas under pressure deep into oil-bearing formations, to force otherwise irretrievable oil to the wellhead. This process, known as enhanced oil recovery (EOR), causes the CO2 to remain deep in the ground and eventually react and stabilize with the rock and water in the formation.

Is carbon sequestration practiced anywhere today?

Yes. The closest location is Beulah, North Dakota, at the Dakota Gasification Plant the largest gasifier in America. This plant produces synthetic natural gas from lignite coal. CO2 from this process is piped several hundred miles to oil fields at Weyburn, Saskatchewan, where it is sequestered in the process of enhanced oil recovery.

Why is Montana suited for a clean coal industry?

With a demonstrated reserve base of 120 billion tons, Montana's coal is, in liquid terms, over one quarter the size of the entire Middle East oil reserve--enough fuel to power every American car for decades. In Montana and across the West, if even a fraction of our reserves were developed and converted to liquid fuel, we could greatly reduce the oil we now import from unfriendly and unstable countries. Or, if we moved toward a gasification program for generating electric power with IGCC plants, we could substantially reduce emissions from the utility industry.

Where is synthetic fuel made today?

South Africa is the leading producer. For decades, it has operated plants that produce an estimated 300,000 barrels of gasoline and diesel a day from coal. A number of other countries, including Qatar, Malaysia and China, are investing in either coal gasification or synfuel production. Increased global demand for oil and other energy has driven up prices and made synfuel production an economically viable alternative.

How would the military benefit from synfuel?

The Office of the Secretary of Defense recently issued a Clean Fuels Initiative proposal to run all battlefield engines on a synthetic fuel. Though its fulfillment may be many years away, this strategy would enable the military to 1) avoid buying oil from unstable regimes that are known sponsors of terror, 2) mitigate supply chain vulnerabilities to events like Gulf Coast hurricanes, 3) meet clean air requirements in European countries where we have airbases, and 4) simplify the fueling of battlefield equipment that presently run on multiple fuels.

Why haven't synfuels been pursued in America before?

They have. In fact, the U.S. government was exploring synfuel as early as 1925. In the 1940s, a Synthetic Liquid Fuels Act passed by Congress appropriated over $80 million for research and production. By the 1950s, America was producing thousands of gallons of synthetic gasoline a day at a test plant in Missouri. But the discovery of cheap oil, combined with a lobbying effort by the oil industry, caused the government to abandon its synfuel research. During the oil crisis in the late 1970s, the federal government briefly pursued synfuel production, but abandoned the idea when the price of oil receded.

Are there other applications of this technology?

In addition to making liquid fuels, coal gasification can be used to generate electricity with virtually no emissions. Looking to the future, it can be used to produce hydrogen for use in fuel cells. Gasification also can be used for industrial products such as naphtha, chemicals, waxes for cosmetics, fertilizers, and carbon dioxide for enhanced oil recovery.

Is synthetic fuel cost effective?

Yes. The cost of making a barrel of synthetic fuel is estimated to be around $35, including the sizeable infrastructure investments and the labor force necessary to operate the plant. At the current and projected price of oil, production should be a cost effective enterprise. Key economic incentives in the recently enacted federal Energy Bill, such as 80% loan guarantees for certain coal liquefaction projects, reduce the economic uncertainty of bringing this technology up to commercial scale.

How long will it take for America to produce enough synfuel to make a difference?

There are already a number of small plants being designed around America, but a large-scale national effort must involve the federal government and will take a number of years. Given South Africa's success in this field, we can assume that if the federal government became meaningfully invested in this concept, America could have a strong synfuel industry within the next decade.

This is just another benefit the US has derived from the defeat of the republicans in the last election. And now on to fetal stem cell research. Now if we can get Bush to crawl under the rock from whence he came. It would be complete victory.

Taming King Coal
November 25, 2006
New York Times Editorial
Taming King Coal
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The front page of this newspaper's business section recently featured two articles about the world's most plentiful fuel, coal. Written from different parts of the globe, they framed the magnitude of the task confronting international negotiators and the newly empowered Democrats in Congress who want to put the brakes on emissions of carbon dioxide, the main global warming gas.

One article pointed out that China will surpass the United States as the world's largest emitter of carbon dioxide by 2009, a decade ahead of previous predictions. A big reason is the explosion in the number of automobiles, but the main reason is China's ravenous appetite for coal, the dirtiest of all the fuels used to produce electricity. Already, China uses more coal than the United States, the European Union and Japan combined. Every week to 10 days, another coal-fired power plant opens somewhere in China, with enough capacity to serve all the households in Dallas or San Diego.

What's frightening about this for those worried about the long-term consequences of warming is that nearly all of these plants are being built along traditional lines, burning pulverized coal to make electricity. And what's sad about it is that there's a much cleaner coal-burning technology available. Known as I.G.C.C. ?- for integrated gasification combined cycle ?- this cleaner technology coverts coal into a gas before it is burned.

These plants produce fewer of the pollutants that cause smog and acid rain than conventional power plants do. More important, from a global warming perspective, they also have the potential to capture and sequester greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide before they enter the atmosphere.

This new technology is not readily available in China, but it is available to utilities in the United States. Which brings us to the second article ?- an announcement by TXU, a giant Texas energy company, that it intends to build 11 new coal-fired power plants in Texas, plus another dozen or so coal-fired monsters elsewhere in the country. All told, this would be the nation's largest single coal-oriented construction campaign in years.

Is TXU availing itself of the cleaner technology? No. TXU will use the old pulverized coal model. The company says the older models are more reliable. But the real reason it likes the older models is that they are easier to build, cheaper to run and, ultimately, much more profitable. So, like the Chinese, TXU is locking itself (and the country) into at least 50 more years of the most carbon-intensive technology around.

Barbara Boxer, the California Democrat who will shortly assume command of the Senate environment committee, believes that we should impose a price on carbon emissions (as Europe has done) so that companies like TXU will begin to think about investing in cleaner technologies ?- technologies that China could then use in its power plants. The message from both Texas and China is that Ms. Boxer should get cracking.

States will tell Supreme Court feds must act on warming
States will tell Supreme Court feds must act on warming
By David G. Savage, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
November 25, 2006

WASHINGTON ?- The EPA must address warming, California and others will tell justices.

The polar icecaps are melting, summers growing hotter and hurricanes becoming more powerful, but the Bush administration has insisted it cannot regulate the gases that many believe are responsible.

On Wednesday, a coalition of 12 states, led by California and Massachusetts, will try to persuade the Supreme Court that the nation's environmental regulators have the legal authority and responsibility to control greenhouse gas emissions linked to global warming ?- which many scientists describe as the biggest environmental threat to the planet.

It is a rare day when state lawyers travel to Washington hoping to win new powers for the federal government. As David Bookbinder, a Sierra Club lawyer, noted, "How often do federal authorities insist they lack the authority to do something?"

The administration's approach to another global issue ?- terrorism ?- has been to assert broad powers to act at home and abroad. On the environmental front, the administration says, it is studying the problem and "seeking a cooperative international approach to addressing global climate change," Solicitor General Paul Clement wrote in his brief to the court.

Putting new limits on motor vehicles and power plants is out of the question, at least for now, he added, saying, "the Environmental Protection Agency lacks authority under the Clean Air Act … to regulate greenhouse gas emissions."

The case before the Supreme Court tests that conclusion. It begins with a simple question: Is carbon dioxide an "air pollutant" under the Clean Air Act? The answer may determine not only whether federal regulators must tackle global warming, but also whether California and other states may do so on their own.

Four years ago, California adopted stricter rules. The state Legislature declared its intent to "achieve the maximum feasible and cost-effective reduction of greenhouse gas emissions" from motor vehicles. These standards for new cars and trucks are to take effect in 2009.

The California way

Because of California's notorious smog problem, Congress permitted the Golden State to adopt stricter exhaust standards for cars and trucks under a special provision in the federal air pollution laws of the 1970s. Other states are allowed to follow California's lead, and 10 ?- from New England to the Pacific Northwest ?- have plans to do so.

"Global warming is a national and international crisis. And even if the federal government won't do anything, many states will," said California Atty. Gen. Bill Lockyer, who filed one of several lawsuits challenging the Bush administration's decision not to act on greenhouse gases.

The legality of California's new vehicle emission standards remains in doubt. They must be approved by the EPA. But the agency has yet to do so, mostly because of its view that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are not air pollutants under the Clean Air Act.

The automakers have sued to block California's rules, citing the EPA's stand.

Humans and animals exhale carbon dioxide, and plants absorb it. It is also emitted from tailpipes and smokestacks when fossil fuels are burned. Once in the atmosphere, carbon dioxide absorbs the sun's radiation and traps heat in the atmosphere. This is known as the greenhouse effect.

As these greenhouse gases ?- including methane, nitrous oxide and fluorocarbons ?- have become more concentrated in the atmosphere, temperatures have increased slowly but steadily. Though some scientists and politicians once dismissed this link, most now acknowledge it.

Bush administration lawyers do not discount the importance of global warming, but they argue it is not covered by the Clean Air Act. That measure, they say, targets pollutants, such as ozone, that are dangerous to breathe ?- not ones that occur in nature and are essentially harmless to breathe, such as carbon dioxide.

Disagreeing, the states' lawyers point to the language of the law. It says an air pollutant is "any physical, chemical (or) biological … substance or matter which is emitted … into the ambient air."

In their brief to the court, they point out, "Motor vehicles emit the physical and chemical matter carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide and hydro-fluorocarbons into the ambient air." Motor vehicles are the source of about 25% of the nation's greenhouse gas emissions.

It says 'shall'

Another provision appears to require regulation of such gases. It says the EPA "shall" regulate any pollutant from cars or trucks "which may reasonably be anticipated to endanger public health or welfare." The law defines the public's welfare to include effects on "climate" and "weather."

The state lawyers argue that because it is now apparent that greenhouse gases are endangering the public welfare, the EPA must regulate them.

Administration and auto industry lawyers say the high court should dismiss the states' lawsuit. They argue that the nation's global warming policy is a political issue to be decided by Congress and the president, not a legal issue to be decided in court.

This argument may well appeal to Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., who has said the court should adopt a more modest role and allow politicians to set policies.

But environmental activists and the state lawyers were pleasantly surprised in June when the Supreme Court voted to take up the case, Massachusetts vs. EPA, despite the objections of the Bush administration.

If the court rules squarely on the question of whether the Clean Air Act regulates greenhouse gases, the stakes will be high for environmentalists, California's regulators and the auto industry.

"If we win, it will free California and other states from a legal threat," said Bookbinder, the Sierra Club lawyer. "But if the Supreme Court says the Clean Air Act does not cover climate change, it would be hard for California to say it has the authority to regulate greenhouse gases."

If the court rejects the Bush administration's stand, the automakers will be under pressure to produce vehicles that get better gas mileage.

The court could also issue a split decision.

It could rule that carbon dioxide is an air pollutant under the Clean Air Act, but that the EPA's administrator is free to decide whether to issue new emissions standards for it. In the past, the court has been very reluctant to require an agency to issue new regulations.

A split decision would not force the federal agency to regulate greenhouse gases, but it could clear the way for California and the states to do so on their own.

Besides Massachusetts and California, the states challenging the Bush administration's policy are Connecticut, Illinois, Maine, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington.

They were joined by the cities of New York, Washington and Baltimore, and several environmental groups.

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I should think the correct thing to do is for congress to pass legislation mandating that new facilities must be built using the cleaner technologies. Hoping to force the building of these facilities through taxation is like putting the cart before the horse.