Security:
CTL fuels for greater energy security

 

Across the world, energy has now become the linchpin of economic competitiveness, forcing the U.S. and its industrial competitors to strategically reassess their energy supplies and sources. The perception of energy scarcity has become acute as political instability menaces existing supplies, unfriendly governments threaten to nationalize energy assets, and nation states revive Great Power alliances to find and secure reliable supplies of oil and gas for their growing economies.

The 2005 hurricane season and the resulting disruption of petroleum production and refining capacity in the gulf, coupled with our nation's increasing dependence on imported energy and the intensified competition for this energy from rapidly expanding economies such as China and India, are compelling reasons for the U.S. to secure and diversify domestic sources of energy.

Clearly, a secure America in the 21st century will require energy security. Our security is jeopardized, however, by our increasing reliance on foreign energy. The United States currently depends on foreign sources for 60 percent of its domestic oil requirements, including crude oil and refined products. According to the Energy Information Administration (EIA), that dependence will grow to 70 percent by 2025.

Already, imported energy - including crude oil and natural gas — accounts for a third of the record U.S. trade deficit and was a major reason why Americans paid 17 percent more for energy in 2005 than the year before. The "hidden cost" of defending oil supplies in the Persian Gulf, estimated conservatively at $305 billion annually, must also be added to the bill for our addiction to energy imports.

In his State of the Union Address, President Bush acknowledged the growing energy challenge confronting the United States by setting a national goal of replacing 75 percent of U.S. energy imports from the Middle East by 2025. The Energy Policy Act of 2005 encouraged the development of alternative fuels such as coal-to-liquid (CTL) fuels and coal-derived natural gas substitutes, but its modest incentives are far too timid a response to today's stark realities.

For a forceful response to the energy challenge, the U.S. must make greater use of its unrivalled coal reserves — to provide significant new supplies of clean CTL fuels, to enhance oil and coal bed methane recovery and to produce ethanol.

The U.S. has 27 percent of world coal supply — the largest of any country — but less than 2 percent of the world's oil and less than 3 percent of its natural gas. By contrast, Iran and Russia together possess almost half of the world's supply of natural gas.

Production of coal-derived liquid fuels would expand potential uses of America's nearly 250 billion tons of recoverable coal reserves beyond electricity generation to help reduce our reliance on foreign sources of oil, while promoting national security and providing for sustained economic growth.

With coal reserves and production dispersed widely among more than two dozen states, the U.S. boasts a geographic diversity of domestic fuel supply that is less susceptible to natural disasters and terrorist threat.

Producing CTL fuel does not depend on unproven technology nor require extensive R&D. China is already building a $2 billion CTL plant that will begin using its coal reserves in the fall of 2007, and plans to build many more.

Moreover, U.S. coal reserves cannot be nationalized by a foreign government, require no costly armed forces to protect, nor costly exploration efforts to discover.

Establishing a goal of producing at least 300,000 barrels of high-grade fuel per day by 2015 using CTL technology is a feasible target. This is equivalent to the amount of transportation fuel consumed daily by the U.S. military for domestic operations. In fact, military and commercial aviation are promising early markets. The Department of Defense is already studying the advantages of CTL fuels to serve our armed forces on the ground and in the air.

For these reasons, CTL fuels are among the most practical, promising answers to greater energy security for the United States.

The Coal-To-Liquids Coalition is providing this web site to further the public's
understanding of the many benefits offered by coal-to-liquid technologies.