1Synfuels from Coal and Coal/Biomass: Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Policy Implications

• Coal-to-liquids (CTL) can be made in large quantities at competitive costs for oil prices ~ $50 a barrel Æ would enhance energy security. • CO2 capture and storage (CCS) is needed at all CTL plants to reduce GHG emission rate for CTL to that for crude oil-derived fuels • Stabilizing atmospheric CO2 at safe level requires reducing emission rate for synfuels to modest fraction of that for crude oil-derived fuels • This would be feasible by coprocessing coal and modest amount of biomass with CCS Æ would exploit negative emissions potential of photosynthetic CO2 storage • Economics of coal/biomass synfuels w/CCS at least as attractive as CTL w/CCS for ~$50/bbl oil and CO2 valued at $100/tC ($27/tCO2). • Synfuels from biomass/coal with CCS Î large climate-friendly role for coal, better prospects for biomass than with conventional biofuels • Enabling policy needs to deal simultaneously with energy security and climate challenges and avoid government trying to picking winners 3CLIMATE RISKS OF COAL SYNFUELS • For Fischer-Tropsch synfuels made from coal without CCS, well-to-wheels GHG emissions are ~2X those for crude oil-derived fuels displaced Î unacceptable from climate change perspective • With max CCS, GHG emissions are ~1X those for displaced HC fuels • Coal’s abundance Î for CTL with max CCS a long-term persistence of the current GHG emission rate for transport fuels • Not good enough—especially in industrialized countries—if world decides to stabilize atmospheric CO2 at “safe ” level – Goals for next 50 years implicit in Pacala & Socolow (2004) “wedges ” strategy