The United States Department of Defense, as recently confirmed by technical experts in a separate branch of our United States Government, knows how to react hydrocarbon synthesis gas, a blend of Carbon Monoxide and Hydrogen made by the "gasification" of Coal and/or Biomass, with more Coal and/or Biomass, and thereby produce synthetic petroleum.
United States Patent Application: 0140093799
Carbon Dioxide - - as it is co-produced in a small way, relative to some all-natural and un-taxable sources of its global emission, such as the Earth's inexorable processes of planetary volcanism, by our economically essential use of Coal in the generation of reliable, abundant and affordable electric power - - is a valuable raw material resource.
We can reclaim Carbon Dioxide from whatever source might be most convenient to us, even the atmosphere itself, and then convert, recycle, that Carbon Dioxide via efficient processes into any and all forms of valuable hydrocarbons, including both gaseous and liquid hydrocarbon fuels.
One introductory, or explanatory, and extended, note seems demanded of us:
We've been reporting over the past however many years that Carbon Dioxide, as can now be efficiently recovered from either our industrial exhaust gases or even the atmosphere itself, is a valuable raw material resource, no matter what the opponents, whatever their true motivations, of our essential use of Coal in the generation of truly abundant and truly affordable electric power would prefer to have everyone believe.
We first remind you of our many reports concerning the US Government-sponsored work undertaken in the Princeton University labs of Professor Andrew Bocarsly, as, for one example, seen in:
Princeton University November 20, 2012 CO2 to Ethanol | Research & Development | News; concerning:
"United States Patent 8,313,634 - Conversion of Carbon Dioxide to Organic Products; November 20, 2012;
https://www.princeton.edu/pei/energy/publications/texts/case_study.pdf
Coal can provide for all, quite literally all, of our nation's energy requirements.
That is:
Not only can we, obviously, generate electricity with Coal, but, we can also concurrently supply all of our needs for liquid and gaseous hydrocarbon fuels - - through known and established technologies for Coal gasification and Coal liquefaction.