A coal powered Air Force

AP/Houston Chronicle:

On a wind-swept air base near the Missouri River, the Air Force has launched an ambitious plan to wean itself from foreign oil by turning to a new and unlikely source: coal.

The Air Force wants to build at its Malmstrom base in central Montana the first piece of what it hopes will be a nationwide network of facilities that would convert domestic coal into cleaner-burning synthetic fuel.

Air Force officials said the plants could help neutralize a national security threat by tapping into the country's abundant coal reserves. And by offering itself as a partner in the Malmstrom plant, the Air Force hopes to prod Wall Street investors — nervous over coal's role in climate change — to sink money into similar plants.

"We're going to be burning fossil fuels for a long time, and there's three times as much coal in the ground as there are oil reserves," said Air Force Assistant Secretary William Anderson. "Guess what? We're going to burn coal."

Tempering that vision, analysts say, is the astronomical cost of coal-to-liquids plants. Their high price tag, up to $5 billion apiece, would be hard to justify if oil prices were to drop.

In addition, coal has drawn wide opposition on Capitol Hill, where some leading lawmakers reject claims it can be transformed into a clean fuel. Without emissions controls, experts say coal-to-liquids plants could churn out double the greenhouse gases as oil.

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The Air Force would not finance, construct or operate the coal plant. Instead, it has offered private developers a 700-acre site on the base and a promise that it would be a ready customer as the government's largest fuel consumer.

Bids on the project are due in May. Construction is expected to take four years once the Air Force selects a developer.

Anderson said the Air Force plans to fuel half its North American fleet with a synthetic-fuel blend by 2016. To do so, it would need 400 million gallons of coal-based fuel annually.

With the Air Force paving the way, Anderson said the private sector would follow — from commercial air fleets to long-haul trucking companies.

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The Air Force's involvement comes at a critical time for the industry. Coal's biggest customers, electric utilities, have scrapped at least four dozen proposed coal-fired power plants over rising costs and the uncertainties of climate change.

That would change quickly if coal-to-liquids plants gained political and economic traction under the Air Force's plan.

"This is a change agent for the entire industry," said John Baardson, CEO of Baard Energy in Vancouver, Wash., awaiting permits on a proposed $5 billion coal-based synthetic fuels plant in Ohio. "There would be a number of plants that would be needed just to support (the Air Force's) needs alone."

Only about 15 percent of the 25,000 barrels of synthetic fuel that would be produced daily at the Malmstrom plant would be suitable for jet fuel. The remainder would be lower-grade diesel for vehicles, trains or trucks and naphtha, a material used in the chemical industry.

That means the Air Force would need at least seven plants to meet its 2016 goal.

This is an ambitious plan. The Air Force already has a high cost basis for their fuel that needs further investigation. For example the Air Force charges the Navy four times the price charged by private companies for in air refueling. I have seen no explanation for this disparity.

I also think drilling at ANWR would produce more fuel at better prices, but the anti energy globo warmers resist common sense on the issue. They will also resist the Air Force coal conversion projects, but may have a harder time.

Note how AP has sold out to the globo warmers by going all in for the "climate change" language to gloss over the inconsistencies of record cold winters.