US has low-cost alternatives to oil

Peak oil frenzy and human-induced climate change avoidable says Columbia University report

Surging oil prices have fueled calls for the United States to develop new sources of affordable and secure domestic energy. While renewable energy — especially biofuels, wind power, and solar technologies — is an area of particular interest, researchers from the Earth Institute at Columbia University say that the U.S. already has relatively low-cost alternatives to imported oil, including coal, tar sands, and oil shale. These resources can be extracted and used at a lower cost to the environment than some might expect.

In a report published in the most recent issue of Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Klaus S. Lackner and Jeffrey D. Sachs argue that “coal alone could satisfy the country’s energy needs of the twenty-first century.” They say that “coal liquefaction, or the process of deriving liquid fuels from coal, is already being used in places and with expanded infrastructure could provide gasoline, diesel fuel and jet fuel at levels well below current prices.” Further, Sachs and Lackner suggest that “environmental constraints such as increased carbon dioxide emissions arising from greater use of coal and other fossil fuels could be avoided for less than 1 percent of gross world product by 2050,” a sum far less than others have estimated.

“[With widespread use of coal liquefaction] the long-term price of liquid hydrocarbon fuels may be lower than it is today, even allowing for pessimistic forecasts for oil and gas reserves,” Sachs and Lackner write. “Even with the most conservative assumptions about learning curves, it appears quite safe to predict that the cost of synthetic oil from coal or other processes, after some transitional pains, will be below $30 per barrel.”

Sachs and Lackner make a case that because the U.S. has large coal deposits — the most extensive in the world — it would be less vulnerable to political uncertainties in other parts of the world.

Mongabay.com