US Air Force ditches coal-to-liquid fuel trial

US Air Force officials announced last week that they have rejected private proposals to build a coal-to-liquid fuel plant to designed to produce jet fuel at its Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana.

The project was proposed as part of an Air Force investigation into increasing the use of a number of alternative fuels that could power flights when oil supplies are tight. Under the proposals, the Malmstrom station would have produced a coal-based jet fuel to be blended 50-50 with conventional jet fuel – a blend already used in a number of US planes.

But in a statement the Air Force said a review had found the proposals to build a plant were not viable, partly because of possible conflicts with Malmstrom's nuclear missile facility which would have been in the "explosive arc " of any station.

The $2bn plant would have been capable of producing up to 30,000 barrels of fuel a day, but at a high cost to the environment, as liquid fuel from coal is estimated to produce more than twice the greenhouse gas emissions of conventional petroleum-based fuel as a result of the energy intensive extraction and refining process.

According to a fact sheet on the development, the Air Force had hoped to limit the proposed plant's emissions, by fitting various clean coal technologies designed to remove the worst greenhouse gases. But now the project has been ditched altogether and the air force confirmed in a statement that no plans were afoot for alternative coal-to-liquid fuel developments.

"The Air Force no longer has any proposals on the table to develop a synthetic fuel plant, but is open to such proposals," it said.

Henry Henderson of the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental advocacy group, said coal-to-liquid fuels "make no sense for a free economy" because they're expensive and would require taxpayer funds to get them off the ground.

"We have a very long history of trying to do this in the United States and it repeatedly results in subsidies from the public and inability to compete in any fair market place," he told the Miami Herald.