Green Options

The Gang-of-20 bill severely limits offshore drilling to a handful of Southeastern states that must opt in to allow increased drilling, and moves the drilling boundary to 100 miles offshore.

The US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency - aka DARPA - has set its Big Brother eye on “clean coal” for airplane fuel. It’s unveiling a program to demonstrate both the economical, and environmentally friendly, conversion of coal-to-liquid (CTL) fuels.

According to Aviation Week, DARPA has issued a broad agency announcement (BAA) soliciting research proposals and plans to award 12-month contracts totaling $4.56 million to demonstrate the feasibility of alternative CTL [...]

Last night I had the opportunity to talk with Bonne Posma, a serial entrepreneur whose most recent company is called Liquid Coal, Inc. He sees a great opportunity for making the world a safer and cleaner place by developing a process that will use heat from high temperature nuclear reactors as part of a process of converting coal into a liquid hydrocarbon.

Bonne is standing on the shoulders of many other engineers and scientists in his efforts. The chemistry required to convert coal, which is mostly carbon and hydrogen, into a liquid hydrocarbon was developed in the 1920s by a German team of Franz Fischer and Hans Tropsch. The Fisher-Tropsch process has a rather uncomfortable history - it’s most prominent use has been by Germany during WWII and by South Africa during the apartheid era.

An Atlanta-based company is betting on a sustainable, unending supply of raw material as feed stock, to create a renewable energy source. Human and industrial wastes will soon be processed into a solid, called “E-Fuel”, a replacement for coal or other fossil fuels.

The company, EnerTech Environmental, says it has received $42 million in funding to continue engineering and completion of a commercial-size plant in Rialto, CA, shown in the picture. Four more plants are in the planning stage as funding for the projects is received. The company says it now has $57 million in venture capital.

A Canadian company has used the current presidential race to plug it’s coal-to-liquid process. Citing positive statements by presidential hopefuls, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and Mike Huckabee, Silverado Green Fuel has posted a video on it’s front page, explaining the process of turning low-grade coal into a clean-burning, non-polluting product.

The Vancouver, BC firm claims their initial production costs will come in at $15 per barrel, on an oil equivalent energy basis. Not bad, they say, considering oil is hanging in there at $90 plus a barrel.