Within reason ANGTL, Alaskan's, Californian’s and the Western States in general
share many of the strategic points outlined in Thomas Feeman’s book with respect to:
Energy Poverty
Global Warming Biodiversity Loss
Petrodictatorship
Energy Supply Shortages
ANRTL’s Alaska CTL program can’t address all the issues outlined above. We can however reduce imported energy, the amount of money being paid to petrodictators all the while making a non petroleum synthetic transportation fuel that is cleaner than any petroleum based fuel on the market and reducing the CO2 foot print of today’s petroleum refinery.
What are the big issues that are controlling America’s destiny?
ENERGY, THE ENVIRONMENT AND THE ECONOMY - The Three "E's"
There are many issues for America to deal with as we move forward during these next two decades. Some can be addressed today most cannot be resolved for decades.
While programs to address climate change can and should be introduced today, it will be years if not decades before we may, if ever, see positive results; primarily because we cannot control emissions in China, India and other developing economies. The current policy of allowing U.S. coals to be exported to countries who will not include responsible capture technologies MUST STOP.
An equally important issue is the amount of money paid out to foreign markets for imported energy. These monies depress the U.S. economy, take money from every corner of our nation, send energy jobs overseas and prop up petrodictatorship’s who fund extremist hell bent on destroying the U.S.
Unless we get under control the transfer of wealth from our addiction to crude oil, it won’t matter what we want to do about climate change as some foreign asset program will control the U.S.
Clearly the biggest long term issue the U.S. faces is Energy Independence.
Some feel that the only solution is “alternative” energy in the form of wind and solar. Others feel the solution is the Hydrogen Economy, some are pushing for nuclear, or new transportation fuels made from biomass, while still others believe conservation is the only answer.
ANRTL believes that it will be a blend of all of these proposed solutions. Some can and should be implemented today, some will take decades to refine and commercially implement.
Energy Independence refers to both reducing U.S. dependence on imported oil and refined transportation fuels plus energy conservation. One could suppose imported natural gas in the form of LNG should also be included in this import reduction. This latter form of energy accounts for less than 2% of U.S. natural gas consumption and much less of the total U.S. energy demand. Transportation needs represents the lion share of this imported energy – by most accounts about 70%.
Let’s be realistic there are two big issues to address with the concept of Energy Independence.
First, to truly be energy independent we need to replace approximately 12,000,000 barrels per day of imports. That is over 180 billion gallons per year. Reducing imports from nations that are against the U.S. way of life gets this number down to 5 million barrels per day. Think of the impact this reduction will have on the petrodictators in Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Iran and Russia, their ability to fund terrorism and world opinion against the U.S.
Second, there are over 200 million vehicles on the road today in the U.S. burning gasoline, diesel and ethanol. These vehicles are not going to be replaced overnight nor in the next 20 years with some futuristic yet to be commercially proven fuel. ANRTL believes that there will be a transition period, 20, 30 maybe even 50 years before a significant number of these vehicles will be running on non petroleum based (crude oil) fuels. In this interim period we have several paths to follow to reduce the volume of imported energy.
The first and possible easiest is energy conservation – i.e. drive less.
The second mandated higher fuel mileage standards although this won’t affect the existing 200 million vehicles on the road, it will have a positive impact in 20 or so years as these older vehicles are retired.
Third and the most promising is the utilization of domestic biomass resources to make compatible (to petroleum based) transportation fuels during this transition period.
We have already seen the unintended consequences of converting “food resources - biomass” to transportation fuels – higher food prices throughout the world. While not a serious problem in the U.S., third world countries are not as fortunate. ANRTL believes that the conversion of the largest biomass resource in the U.S. and possibly 1/3 of the worlds proven resource, coal offers a clear path towards energy independence and more importantly, a clear transition fuel between petroleum fuels today and the promise of a still yet to be defined transportation fuel or resource of the future. Keep in mind, although not commonly described in this light, coal is a biomass. It’s just not a renewable biomass resource.
Utilization of coal for this transportation fuel transition is not with some serious issues. Many of today’s technologies used in the conversion process produce moderate to large amounts of CO2 in the manufacturing process limiting first generation CTL plants to sites that have existing underground reservoirs, generally depleted oil and gas reservoirs that can store this sequestered CO2 for millions of years. Next generation CTL conversion plants will produce less CO2 while current research will prove the concept of safely storing CO2 in saline aquifers. In addition adding refuse derived fuel (RDF) from municipal solid wastes to the gasifier feedstock resource will enable CTL plants to produce ultra clean F-T fuels with a negative CO2 footprint; the long term goal of California.
CTL will be expensive because the cost to make super clean fuels is high; the cost to sequester CO2 created during the manufacture is equally expensive. This higher cost will cause conservation, the low hanging fruit to reduce consumption. It will also support the need for higher CAFÉ standards again reducing consumption. But note, once the capital cost of a CTL plant is recovered, CTL is price competitive with petroleum based refineries that spew tons of CO2 into the atmosphere and deliver toxic fuels that can kill the consumer and foul the environment if accidentally spilled.
So what is next?
The biggest opponent of coal to liquids in the U.S. is miss-information.
Our goal for the next 6 to 12 months is to begin re-educating the electorate, primarily in the western states of California, Washington and Oregon in that order. Today when the average person hears the world “coal” they see a 1950’s steel mill or power plant with a large plume of black smoke rising out of its stacks. They don’t know the difference between gasification with capture and combustion without. They are unaware of the need to capture contaminates in the Fischer-Tropsch process to protect catalysts, resulting in the high costs of the process but more importantly providing the ability to produce ultra clean transportation fuels with little to no harmful emissions.
Why is this important? Because the average politician and to a lesser extent the Commissioners and staffs of the regulatory agencies are reluctant to even say the word “coal” out of fear they will lose their jobs. This translates to a reluctance to advise State and Federal representatives to support long term energy policies that involve coal. Without long term support from Congress, CTL is unlikely in the U.S.
We have been asked by several agencies to develop a program that can target the people through the media on the benefits of the coal to liquids process while debunking the claims of harmful emissions. This is no easy chore and one I rather doubt will swing any people’s opinion if we try to address it from a “technical” position. (SEE CLEAN COAL PDF FOR MORE INFORMATION)In fact I rather doubt that saying or showing the capture of emissions whether they are solids, liquids or gasses will make a difference. I do believe however that concentrating on the finished fuel, the F-T diesel and its already EPA approved as non toxic and biodegradable will capture their attention.
There are two things that people in the west love, their water and their mountains. If they are not at the beach they are exploring the “wilderness”. I believe that we can approach this issue from two directions; water and hill top.
We can obtain a double hull boat, reasonably small to enter all harbors along the coast – double hull because it’s safer and considerably environmentally better. This boat will be fueled by F-T diesel made from coal produced in South Africa CTL plants. While we can provide information on sequestering of CO2, the capture of heavy metals along with other pollutants, the selling point will be one of the crew members drinking from a vial of our diesel and pouring F-T diesel into a tropical fish tank. (See ANRTL's Peter Tijm as he sips F-T diesel at a presentation in Anchorage June 2008)
A Colorado company makes a diesel RV called the Earth Roamer, that uses solar panels and other energy saving features to provide a “greener” RV experience. Traveling throughout the west, stopping at small towns and RV camp sites can attract local media to the revolutionary event – “greener RVing” with F-T. While others are having a sip of coffee or a beer our RVer will be having a shot of F-T diesel.
Don’t try this at home kids will be the disclaimer for TV and the press. F-T fuels are manufactured under a total different process from a crude oil refinery. Crude oil refineries capture little if any emissions and produce fuels that can kill you, even if you don’t drink them. The manufacture of F-T is an expensive process but the resulting fuels, while totally compatible with today’s engines are cleaner burning and are produced from domestic resources – not IMPORTED OIL. Jobs, thousands of jobs, if not millions will be created in the U.S. Tens of billions of dollars will not flow to the Middle East but to states throughout the U.S. F-T fuels will provide the long term transportation fuels to bridge the gap from today’s petroleum based vehicles and tomorrows still unknown transportation fuels.
Will this exercise in education be cheap, NO. Will it be time consuming, YES. Will it work, YES. Can and should California lead the way, YES
How should we collectively proceed?
We need to form an alliance with the 5 western states served by the three refining centers on the West Coast. Washington, Oregon, California, Nevada and Arizona which represent approximately 6 out of every voting members of Congress.
We would ask the Governor of Alaska to invite the Governors (possibly including federal representatives) of the 5 Western states that would receive the F-T fuels to attend a regional energy conference in Anchorage. The primary purpose of this regional energy conference would be to allow the Governors and other interested parties to see the location of the proposed Alaska CTL plant, the site of the power plant that would be replaced with a waste heat power system and more importantly, the oil and gas fields that would serve as the locations to sequester CO2.
We might finish off with a presentation in Washington D.C. directly to interested Congressman.
In the end we would expect endorsements from the States of California, Washington, Oregon, Arizona and Nevada to their federal Congressional representatives to back a modification of the existing energy credits for F-T fuels from biomass and coal contained in the 2005 Transportation Bill.
What support are we seeking on the Federal level?
We are seeking to amend the energy credits contained in the 2005 Transportation Bill that must be renewed every 5 years to a minimum of 15 years of support (operating years) for the first few commercial scale CTL plants built in the U.S. The current energy credits for F-T fuels run until November 2011. They are then eligible for additional 5 year terms just as ethanol, biodiesel, CNG and other alternative transportation fuels.
Specifically we are seeking the same level of support ethanol had some 30 years ago. When first approved as an alternative fuel to be added to gasoline to form gasohol, it received 20 years of guaranteed credits. This enabled the industry to begin, plants to be built, the technology to be accepted by the financial community and literarily hundreds of ethanol plants to be built across the country.
One commercial scale CTL plant will produce over 1 billion gallons of F-T fuels or 25% of all of today’s hundreds of ethanol plants. The transitioning of U.S. electric generation from coal to wind, solar and nuclear while manufacturing transportation fuels from coal and biomass to liquids plants that sequester CO2 will both reduce greenhouse gas emissions and U.S. dependence on imported oil. This is will be a major step forward for California and western states in leading the U.S. towards an environmentally securer National Energy Policy.
