The 2007 edition of Coal Facts is in progress.  As is traditional, a limited number of full page full color ads will be sold to defray the printing costs.  Contact Dan Miller at 342-4153 if you would like one of these ads.

The Herald-Leader editorial board has again ignored scientific studies on coal-to-liquid fuel emissions and appears interested only in scaring Kentuckians with half-truths and misrepresented statistics.

I am a strong believer in the free market, and I relied on my long experience in economics when I wrote the coal-to-liquid legislation that I introduced with Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill. My bill would provide incentives for the first commercial demonstrations of coal-to-liquid technology.

With modest initial investment we can kick-start this industry, and then the government will get out of the way and let the marketplace takeover. I would rather the government not have any involvement in coal-to-liquids, but this industry needs assistance because of the threat of OPEC, oil tyrants like Venezuelan President Hugo Ch‡vez and technology challenges.

Unlike the programs from the 1970s, my approach would cap the amount of money that can be spent and provide the limited government support needed to build a handful of plants.

Coal-to-liquids will not only be driven by the free market but also will power our military as it protects our freedom throughout the world. The top energy priority for our military is to have a secure, domestic fuel source for our men and women in uniform.

The Air Force is a strong supporter of these fuels and has engaged an aggressive testing program in B-52 bombers and will start tests on additional jets soon. They have an outstanding evaluation so far. These fuels burn cleaner and at lower temperatures, which reduces the radar profile and heat signature of our jets. And it has a higher efficiency, allowing jets to fly faster and farther on the same tank of fuel.

Despite the commentary to the contrary, coal-to-liquid fuel can be significantly cleaner than existing fuels in terms of air pollutants like sulfur and particulate matter, as well as carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions.

I have studied coal-to-liquids extensively, and reports from the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Energy, Princeton University and the Idaho National Laboratory have shown that coal-to-liquids' rate of life-cycle greenhouse gas emissions will vary dramatically based on the technology, feedstocks and process used.

These researchers have shown that the coal-to-liquid process could one day produce a fuel that is carbon neutral. This is not pie-in-the-sky research. Using some of the same ideas, a planned plant in Ohio -- one that will need some government support to get started -- will produce coal-to-liquid diesel that has 46 percent fewer carbon emissions than diesel fuel made from oil.

That is why, when I offered a coal-to-liquid fuel amendment to energy legislation in the Senate last month, I required that government money be used only in projects that will produce a fuel with fewer carbon emissions than the oil-based fuel it replaces.

Despite the way it is characterized in the press, every gallon of coal-to-liquid made with help from my amendment would reduce our country's carbon emissions and would be a gallon of oil we do not have to buy from the Middle East.

Coal-to-liquid fuel is not a distraction; it is a domestic answer to one of the biggest problems facing America. It will lower energy prices for U.S. families, improve the environment, create thousands of jobs in Kentucky and bring billions of dollars in new investment to the state.

This will be a clean fuel made from Kentucky coal, and the Herald-Leader is dead wrong to oppose it.

Lawmakers want Capitol to go green

WASHINGTON --Congress says it is going to join the war against global warming by cleaning up its own backyard, now cluttered with a coal-burning power plant, a fleet of fuel-inefficient vehicles and old-fashioned lights.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has set a goal of making House operations carbon neutral during this session of Congress, meaning the House would remove as much carbon dioxide from the atmosphere as it adds by the end of next year.

"The House must lead by example and it is time for Congress to act on its own carbon footprint," Pelosi said in announcing the initiative that would also shift the House to 100 percent renewable electric power.

Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., has sponsored legislation with the long-term aim of making the entire Capitol complex, 23 buildings where some 15,000 people work, carbon neutral by 2020.

Currently the Capitol complex, which includes office buildings, the Library of Congress, the Botanic Garden and the Government Printing Office, accounts for about 316,000 metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions a year, the same as 57,455 cars.

About one-third of that comes from the combustion of fossil fuels at the 97-year-old Capitol Power Plant, the only coal-burning facility in the District of Columbia.

In addition, the Government Accountability Office said in a recent report, there is not one hybrid-electric vehicle in the legislative branch fleet of more than 300 vehicles. The fleet, mostly light-duty trucks, has only 35 vehicles that use alternative fuels, although the Architect's Office has ordered that almost all newly acquired vehicles be alternative-fuel compatible.

House workers have taken the immediate step of converting 2,000 desk lamps to more efficient compact fluorescent lamps. Within six months the remaining 10,000 desk lamps will switch to CFLs, saving the House $245,000 a year in electric power costs.

House Chief Administrative Officer Daniel Beard, in a report to Pelosi, said the House side of the Capitol, which includes four large office buildings, was responsible for 91,000 tons of greenhouse gas in the fiscal year ending last September, equivalent to annual carbon dioxide emissions of 17,200 cars.

The largest source of carbon dioxide comes from the purchase of electricity. Beard said his office, working with the Architect of the Capitol, will strive to meet all electricity needs, about 103,000 megawatt-hours per year, with renewable sources. Currently, more than half the electricity Congress buys is generated by coal. Only 2 percent comes from renewable fuels.

That alone, Beard said, would eliminate 57,000 tons a year of greenhouse gas emissions, the same as removing 11,000 cars from the roads. Another 7,130 tons would be saved with plans to convert overhead ceiling lights with high-efficiency lighting and controls.

He said these steps, and others including buying energy-efficient computers and furnishings containing recycled products and installing an Ethanol-85 tank for congressional vehicles, would still leave them about 34,000 tons short of meeting the carbon neutrality goal. This could be dealt with either by buying offset credits in the domestic market or contributing a per ton payment to a "green revolving fund" where revenues received from various sources are used for energy and water conservation initiatives.

On the Senate side, Rules and Administration Committee Chairman Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., has outlined a plan to audit energy use in all Senate buildings and reduce energy consumption by 30 percent by 2015 by installing high-efficiency lighting and buying renewable energy supplies.

All these efforts, said Anthony Kreindler, spokesman for Environmental Defense, are "meaningful not only for what they are doing for the Capitol, but it does set a good example for the rest of the country."

The biggest challenge remains the Capitol Power Plant, an eyesore located four blocks south of the Capitol. The plant hasn't generated power since 1952, but it does provide steam for heating and cooling.

The plant's boilers are fired using coal for 49 percent of their output and natural gas for 47 percent. While the plant is a fairly small source of air pollutants, it is still the District's third-biggest polluter, after two local power company plants.

"In the shadow of the nation's capital, we should expect more than a dirty power plant that pollutes the air and our community," Kerry said in a statement.

Lawmakers, dealing with the over-budget, still-unfinished $600 million Capitol Visitor Center, are in no mood to spend money on a new plant, and proposals to eliminate coal have been resisted by coal-state Sens. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., and Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.

"With the emergence of new clean coal technologies, I believe coal should play a role in meeting the energy needs of the Capitol complex," Byrd said.

A proposed House spending bill for 2008 sets aside $3.9 million to begin replacing coal with greater use of natural gas. The Senate, in a nod to Byrd and McConnell, is backing a $3 million plan by Senate Environment Committee Chairman Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., and Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., for a project that reduces carbon dioxide when coal is burned at the plant.

Governors call for clean coal funding

Huntsman's energy resolution gets support from his Western peers

Salt Lake Tribune - Monday, June 11, 2007

DEADWOOD, S.D. - Leaders of Western states banded together Sunday to call on the federal government for help in funding new technologies for clean coal energy.
    Meeting in this historic 19th century gold mining town, the Western Governors' Association unanimously supported a resolution by Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. urging the federal government for money and flexibility to move ahead on a spectrum of energy technologies.
    The primary goal: to make coal power environmentally acceptable for future generations by pumping its greenhouse emissions underground to combat global warming.
    "With this resolution, the Western governors now have said, 'This is important work and we are committed to leading out on it,' " explained Huntsman's energy adviser Dianne Neilson.
    The governors hope that federal funding for reducing coal pollution, spent in the East for decades, will begin to flow to Western states that not only have vast coal reserves but the subterranean geology to hold the resulting carbon gases underground.
    The resolution emphasized funding large-scale testing of so-called carbon sequestration technology that allows carbon dioxide and other gases produced by coal-fired plants to be captured, compressed and stored deep in the earth rather than released into the atmosphere. The governors also called for support in developing renewable energy sources, such as solar and wind power.
    "The West is on track if we continue to aggressively pursue these kinds of energy policies," said South Dakota Gov. Mike Rounds. "More needs to be done to get this energy, including capturing and sequestering carbon."
    A panel of energy experts briefed the governors on the technical and funding challenges of coal sequestering.
    Gregory McRae, a professor of chemical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, told the governors that injecting carbon dioxide into the earth is feasible, but has yet to be proven on a large scale.
    "We have to build public confidence in the technology's safety and that [the carbon dioxide] is going to stay there," McRae said. "There is a really critical need for large scale studies. We have to do some tests to convince the public this is a safe thing to do."
    But Jonathan Schrag, director of the sustainable energy center at Columbia University's Earth Institute, warned carbon sequestering will not come cheap. Consumers can expect the price of electricity to climb from 30 percent to 60 percent.
    Still, he encouraged the states to accept the risks of being pioneers in the technology, despite its early costs. Services and industries associated with carbon sequestering will cluster in the pioneering states, repaying the risk takers with high tech economic growth.
    In answer to Huntsman's question on what states can do to expedite coal sequestering technology, McRae called for research on a Manhattan Project scale through meaningful incentive programs.
    "It has to be incentive driven," said McRae. "That would open a much broader spectrum of solutions."
    But John O'Donnell, president of the solar power company Ausra Inc., offered the governors an alternative to coal-power generation: large-scale renewable energy projects. The necessary technology, he said, is about to enter the market.
    Solar, geothermal and wind energy's remaining barrier is finding cheap investment capital. Because lenders perceive a high risk in investing in yet-untested renewable energy projects, financing remains expensive, O'Donnell said. "How fast renewable energy enters the market and becomes viable depends on how fast we can deal with the risk-adjusted cost of capital," he said.
    O'Donnell said the states must lend money directly or develop loan-guarantee programs to help renewable energy over this final barrier.