Increased Automobile Fuel Efficiency and Synthetic Fuels: Alternatives for Reducing Oil Imports. Background Paper Number 3. Environmental Issues of Synthetic Transportation Fuels from Coal

摘要

Environmental impacts from large-scale commercialization of coal liquefaction are important to government, industry, the public, and a variety of interest groups. This report reviews environmental issues associated with coal liquefaction processes by addressing the following topics: a comparison of the environmental differences among technologies; a comparison of the impacts among different coal regions; a description of the uncertainty of synfuels data and environmental effects; and an identification of problems aggravated by accelerated development schedules.