The coal industry wants to make liquid fuels out of coal, but their claims of “clean” don’t add up.
The coal industry is touting a plan to transform millions of tons of coal into diesel and other liquid fuels - an expensive, inefficient process that releases large quantities of carbon dioxide, the worst global warming pollutant, into the air. Instead of offering viable answers to the critical problem of global warming, this senseless industry "solution" would exacerbate the problem: Relying on coal-derived liquid as an alternative to oil-based fuels could nearly double global warming pollution for every gallon of transportation fuel that is produced and used.
Relying on coal-derived liquid as an alternative fuel could nearly double global warming pollution for every gallon of transportation fuel produced and used.
In the first place, if a slew of coal-to-liquid plants came on-line, coal-mining activity itself would have to increase, bringing with it a new mother lode of hazardous and acidic waste, contaminated groundwater, and clearcutting of native hardwood forests for mountaintop removal - to name but a few of mining's destructive environmental and human-health effects. Second, carbon dioxide emissions could nearly double using coal liquids instead of natural gas and petroleum, at the same, critical moment when scientists are saying we need to act immediately to cut emissions by 60 to 80 percent by the middle of the century in order to keep harmful impacts of global warming to a minimum. Projected impacts of such global warming, if we do not cut emissions rapidly and definitively, include cataclysmic biodiversity loss through extinction and mass famine-induced starvation among human populations.
The total emissions rate for oil and gas fuels is about 27 pounds of carbon dioxide per gallon, counting both production and use, while the estimated total emissions from coal-derived fuel is more like 50 pounds of carbon dioxide per gallon -- nearly twice as much.
And even if the carbon dioxide from coal-to-liquid plants were somehow stopped from entering the atmosphere, coal liquids would still pollute more than current fuel sources do. Since policies that establish strict limits on carbon dioxide are necessary and inevitable, it would be the height of folly to invest in just another technology that drives us further down the path to dependency on carbon fuels. Investment in coal-to-liquids production would finally be left stranded, and the social and economic costs of irrational energy policy would be born by all of us. What we need are straightforward, clean energy sources involving renewables like wind, solar, and biofuels.