Baard Energy's suggestion last week that the US Air Force should effectively ignore its own environmental regulations and commit to buy Baard's synthetic fuel as a way to help revive employment opportunities in Ohio should be dismissed outright. In fact, it seems almost laughable that Baard's "creative greening proposal" should be given an audience at all given the government is refusing to buy Baard's synthetic fuel based on the fact that the lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions from Baard's fuel exceeds that of conventional fuels by over 60% (see graph below):

Indeed, if Baard was actually "taking coal and cleanly turning in to high quality fuel", it would not be in violation of Section 526 of the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 and would be eligible for consideration from the DoD based on the merits of the plant. Baard's original plan to include carbon, capture and storage and a 30% Biomass co-feed would actually have made their fuel less carbon intensive than diesel and probably make them eligible for DoD consideration, but Baard has since abandoned this plan and instead opted to produce a lower quality product.

Further, the idea that this facility will in some way help "green the nation" clearly fails to take into account the fact that this $6bln facility is expected to have a carbon footprint of nearly 27 million tons of CO2 a year (when the electricity facility is included), and would increase fine particle matter and sulfur dioxide pollution substantially in an area of the country already overburdened with pollution from neighboring facilities.

This is not even weighing in on the financial risk of the facility for Columbriana County, which would ultimately be held liable in the event that higher than projected funding, construction, carbon, and fuel costs made the facility uneconomic to run over time. Indeed without a government contract to supply the Air Force with costs plus production of synthetic fuel, it seems unlikely that this facility will be built at all given the economic risks involved in developing Baard's dirty brand of CTL.

While the proposed Baard facility poses serious environmental and financial risks, the good news is that there are better alternatives for attracting new, long-term jobs to Columbiana County and the rest of Ohio. Transitioning to a clean energy economy will require rapid growth in many of Ohio's manufacturing sectors. Electricians and carpenters will retrofit our state's buildings to improve their energy efficiency. Millwrights, machinists and steel workers will build wind turbines for use in northwestern Ohio and in neighboring states. Welders and electrical engineers will build solar panels. Agricultural workers and chemists will work to produce cellulosic ethanol from grass, wood or agricultural waste. Unlike the coal industry, these industries represent growth sectors in both Ohio and nationwide. Instead of bucking the national trends, Columbiana County can lead the way by embracing such green jobs.

There are also better alternatives for achieving energy security than turning coal into fuels.  Higher automobile efficiency, smart growth, and renewable fuels could all reduce our dependence on oil while saving consumers money and protecting the environment.  In addition, high efficiency plug-in hybrids are a far superior strategy to liquid coal given that electricity can be formed from a wide array of resources.  Even if some of the electricity needed for plug-in hybrids was generated from coal with carbon capture and sequestration, the pollution footprint would be much lower than that of fuel from Baard's proposed liquid coal facility.   We should invest in these cleaner, more efficient, and more economical alternatives rather than continuing to subsidize the use of dirty coal.