Topping Off

The Air Force has made synthetic fuel production a top mission.

For an organization that burns through 2.6 billion gallons of jet fuel a year -about $10 million worth a day- paying the monthly electric bill isn't the biggest energy problem. More than half of the Defense Department's petroleum consumption, which accounts for 90 percent of the fuel used by the entire federal government, is burned up as jet fuel.

To reduce costs, the Air Force wants to use a 50/50 blend of JP-8 jet fuel and synthetic fuel made from liquefied coal. The United States has more coal reserves than any other nation, and the Air Force figures that if suppliers could spin some of that coal into jet fuel, the increase in supply would drive down costs and reduce dependence on foreign oil at the same time.

Coal-to-liquid fuel technology was pioneered by German scientists in the 1920s using what is known as the Fischer-Tropsch process. The Germans fueled the Luftwaffe with this synthetic fuel during World War II, and South Africa, rich in coal deposits and restricted from importing oil during its years under apartheid rule, has used synthetic fuel for years.

The Air Force already has certified B-52 bombers and C-17 transport aircraft, and this spring it successfully demonstrated the B-1 bomber could fly on the 50/50 blend at supersonic speeds. The service plans to certify the entire fleet for the fuel blend by 2011, and by 2016 it wants to buy half of its aviation fuel used in the continental United States as a 50/50 blend, says Kevin Billings, the Air Force's deputy assistant secretary for energy, environment, safety and occupational health.

But there's a problem with the Air Force's plans. The process of turning coal into liquid fuel generates more greenhouse gases than conventional petroleum refining. Federal agencies are prohibited by the 2007 Energy Independence and Security Act from purchasing alternative fuels in commercial quantities if the synthetic fuel production process generates more greenhouse gases over the course of the fuel's life cycle than petroleum fuels. The Air Force has purchased the relatively small quantities of synthetic fuel used in the certification tests from a Shell plant in Malaysia.

Billings says the Air Force has always maintained that it won't buy synthetic fuel in commercial quantities unless suppliers can make the production process greener than the one for JP-8 fuel. As it is, there currently are no reliable standards for measuring life-cycle emissions for either the conventional fuel or the synthetic fuel.

In the fall of 2007, the Air Force announced it wanted to lease several hundred acres of underused land at Malmstrom Air Force Base in Great Falls, Mont., to a developer that would build and operate a coal-to-liquid fuel plant capable of producing up to 30,000 barrels of synthetic fuel a day. Malmstrom is ideally located for such a venture with its proximity to the state's enormous coal reserves, rail and pipelines and other critical infrastructure.

Despite support from Montana's congressional delegation and governor, the proposal raises serious environmental concerns and is likely to galvanize opponents of coal-to-liquid fuel production. The current manufacturing process, in addition to emitting large quantities of carbon dioxide, also uses and contaminates an enormous amount of water, which must then be treated.

Even if the Air Force and its industry partners can clean up coal-to-liquid production technology as the service has pledged to do, getting coal out of the ground will continue to be an inherently dirty process.

Not all the plan's detractors are environmentalists. Members of the Defense Science Board cast doubt on the Air Force's goals for synthetic fuel production in a February report that found "domestically produced synthetic fuel does not contribute to Defense's most critical fuel problem-delivering fuel to deployed forces."

The task force expressed a number of concerns: "Capital costs and production costs are high, putting investments at long-term risks. The environmental control technologies needed to allow the plants to operate over the long term have only been demonstrated at limited scale and their costs are highly uncertain."

Still, Air Force officials believe the offset synthetic fuel might provide to dependence on foreign petroleum will balance any risk associated with the program, and with oil trading at more than $140 a barrel this summer, the economic feasibility of the plan is tipping in favor of coal-to-liquid technology. "We're very bullish on the fact that there are technologies out here that will allow us to use fossil fuel, like coal, in a much more environmentally friendly footprint than we have today, but we're not spending enough time and energy and money figuring them out," says William Anderson, the Air Force's top energy executive.

Officials aren't saying how many bids the service received for the Malmstrom proposal or which companies made offers, but the interest exceeded the service's expectations, Anderson said. The Air Force plans to announce the selection of a developer in December.