Bodman wants to advance clean coal
HOUSTON, Feb. 14 U.S. Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman on Wednesday said clean coal technology was a key priority for the Bush administration.
We must take steps to accelerate the development of nontraditional fossil fuels, like oil shale and oil sands, and perhaps the most promising, in my view, expand the availability of clean-coal technologies around the world, Bodman said during his address at the Cambridge Energy Research Associate CERA Week in Houston. Bodman talked about existing clean coal and coal-to-liquid technology using the Fischer-Tropsch process, led by Sasol in South Africa. While the technology has been around for about 80 years, he said, manufacturing glitches and carbon sequestering issues are now being worked out.
Bodman elaborated on the definition of clean coal, citing clean combustion, carbon dioxide sequestering and coal gasification as the technologies considered clean. When coal is gasified, he said, the hydrogen can be used for generating electricity or to power a fuel cell powered vehicle.
The environmental challenges posed by fossil energy use must be confronted directly, Bodman said. The Department of Energy also has a series of partnerships across the country, as well as the FutureGen project and clean coal funding requests in the 2008 fiscal budget. |
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