Oil-from-coal plans lead to environmental concerns

Plans by a Chinese energy company to make liquid fuels from coal have provoked heated responses from many environmental campaigners, with their claims that the process will increase carbon emissions and further aggravate global warming.

The Mongolian plant will use technology, developed by Germany during World War 2, that changes coal into synthetic diesel. According to China this “Nazi fuel” would stop any economic reliance on foreign oil. China’s economy is already booming.

The US and India are also making major investments in the technology.

The technology is being promoted worldwide by coal companies as the most lucrative solution to high energy prices and worries about energy security. Promoters claim that the liquid fuel is ‘clean’ as sulphur and other contaminents are removed during the procedure.

Operated by Shenhua Corporation, the Chinese facility is set to be the worldwide pioneer of its type. Industry experts are expecting the plant to open within a matter of weeks. Company officials have put building work at 99.5% complete.

South Africa is host to three comparable plants that produce around a third of South Africa’s energy requirements.

Set to be published by spring, an IEA report on technology will draw attention to similar ongoing projects in the US, China, New Zealand, Japan, the Philippines, Botswana, South Africa and Indonesia.

The fuel has been claimed to be economic if oil prices remain above US$25-40 a barrel. At present oil prices easily double the figure, last month momentarily reaching $100 a barrel.

A study by the Chinese Academy of Sciences last year claimed that making liquid fuels from coal is the most logical way of coping with problems of oil supply.

With an estimated additional two coal-to-liquid plants are under development in China, the Chinese government has taken steps to limit the number of smaller facilities as a result of concerns over the environmental impact.

Despite promoters pointing out the ‘cleanliness’ of the fuel, the industry’s own figures indicate that the conversion process and burning of the liquid fuel releases nearly twice the carbon pollution as conventional diesel.

Friends of the Earth have expressed their belief that the process illustrates a shift in the wrong direction. Their concerns lie with fact that the industry has hastened to construct new sources of energy-intensive energies, believing that although processes such as coal-to-liquid fuel are technically possible more people need to highlight more sustainable alternatives.

Luke Warren, from the World Coal Institute, believed that whilst the process undeniably yields high amounts CO2, the gas could be captured and stored underground.

However the possibilities for large-scale carbon capture and storage are yet to be proven according to the UN intergovernmental panel on climate change.

Only one Australian plant, of the 30 coal-to-liquid plants being developed worldwide, aims to incorporate a carbon capture trial.

However even storing the CO2 may not resolve the dilemma; the US’s Argonne National Laboratory from the Department of Energy in an analysis released last year showed that liquid fuels from coal, even taking into account any carbon capture and subsequent storage, would produce about 20% more CO2 than petrol and diesel made from oil.

In April, the World Coal Institute have organised a major industry conference in Paris that aims to promote the coal-to-liquid format.

Companies from the Middle East and North Africa are now converting natural gas into diesel, meaning that the coal-to-liquid format is not the only unconventional option.

In the UK Shell has begun an advertising campaign that promotes its own gas-to-liquid technology, calling it clean fuel with considerably less emissions of pollutants.

Yet University of California, Berkeley scientists have discovered that the gas-to-liquid procedure is generally from 7-16% worse for global warming than oil.