“I believe that coal is America’s most affordable, available, reliable and secure source of energy, And using America’s coal resources as a transportation fuel will decrease our dependence on foreign sources of oil and really strengthen our national security.” declared Senator John Barrasso. Hit the jump to read the rest of the story.
In sometimes animated and wide-ranging testimony before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee on Tuesday morning, witnesses and lawmakers debated the relative merits of putting coal in the nation’s gas tanks.
“I believe that coal is America’s most affordable, available, reliable and secure source of energy,” declared Senator John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), whose own coal-friendly American Alternative Fuels Act of 2011, introduced two weeks ago, was on the committee’s morning agenda. “And using America’s coal resources as a transportation fuel will decrease our dependence on foreign sources of oil and really strengthen our national security.”
Turning coal into a liquid fuel is a hot topic. The coal industry, backed by friendly Republicans in Congress, is pushing a suite of bills that would give liquified coal fuels, which can be used as substitutes for oil, a foothold in the marketplace. One bill, floated in the House last month, would literally require that liquid fuel squeezed from coal be blended, in increasing amounts, directly into the nation’s aviation, motor vehicle, home heating and boiler fuel over coming decades.
Some analysts say that if done properly, and with the right regulatory and environmental protections, such fuels could have a role to play in a diversified domestic energy mix.
But critics argue that the necessary environmental protections don’t really exist, and that turning to coal for any fresh purpose, rather than working wholeheartedly to leave the stuff forever in the ground, simply doesn’t make sense. They say the push to turn coal into liquid fuels is a cynical ploy by a dying and desperate industry, and, moreover, one that relies on Nazi-era technology that has no redeeming social or environmental characteristics worthy of new public investment.
“We need to send the signal that the new fuels we start to commercialize can’t cause more problems than they fix,” said Brian Siu, a policy analyst with the Natural Resources Defense Counsel who provided testimony before a Senate subcommittee on the issue Tuesday, in an interview with The Huffington Post. “Why should we be be helping a technology to get of the ground that is vastly worse for the environment and for the climate than we already have today?”
