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coal - presumably coal-to-liquids?
using coal to produce fuel will have massive environmental impact (count 100 Mt to get 1mb/d, plus absolutely staggering volumes of water) so this is unlikely to be more than a small niche/

tar sands
Similar issues. See the link in my diary.

diesel fuel-hybridµ
Now that's a real solution. But that's on the demand side, not the supply side.

*biofuels
Not sustainable, and not physically doable on a large scale. Again, it will be a niche for the smart money following subsidies, but it will create knowck on effects in other ag. commodity markets very quickly.

In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes

by Jerome a Paris (etg@eurotrib.com) on Mon Oct 2nd, 2006 at 05:29:08 AM EST
[ Parent ]
I dont' think the environmental impacts of coal liquefaction will hamper its development in the US. There was crash program for mass liquefaction under Carter, it was cancelled because prices went down in the 80's and it was not feasible to increase coal production so fast. But it will come back, pushed by the OilCos (they own a good share of US coal mines since that time), the US DoD, and also "who cares about greenhouse gas ? China is dumping 10 times as much as us !"

Just like Europeans will liquefy russian gas to replace diesel... Something to watch: I once read that modern variants of FT process, require huge amounts of cobalt for catalysts, and already-planned gas liquefaction facilities around the world would account for 5% of cobalt production for about 10 years. So if it ramps up, we should see another commodity under pressure.

Pierre

by Pierre on Mon Oct 2nd, 2006 at 09:38:03 AM EST
[ Parent ]

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