No words on global climate change Mike? I'm assuming carbon emissions are low on your list of priorities.

Australia must either ween itself off coal for energy production or develop practical carbon capture technology. I would imagine that there is no carbon capture options for liquid transport fuels.

The capital investment required to scale this technology up to a point were it could mitigate peak oil (which is IMO, 2008-12) would be much better spent on pursuing demand reduction strategies. This approach would also address the issue of carbon pollution.

This discussion has an amazing blind spot when it comes to greenhouse consequences. One estimate puts well-to-wheels greenhouse emissions of coal-to-liquids at 180% of petroleum based fuels. CTL transfers more carbon from the ground to the atmosphere than does oil and about the same if the CO2 is captured. If we made low sulphur, low aromatics fuel out of unwanted inmates of gaols or nursing homes we could call it 'clean fuel' by your definition. I'd call CTL 'climate change fuel'. Other things to think about are the local impacts of all the extra coal mining and the possibility of a future government bringing in carbon taxes or EU style carbon trading. Since coal deposits will be used up more quickly in time yet another fuel source will be needed. A better idea I think is centralised FT synthesis of locally made oil from waste biomass. Not only is the carbon recycled within the biosphere but it would benefit areas that lack coal deposits.

We must advance in all areas.

Finding an energy source which doesn't emit the greenhouse gases of coal (such as nuclear) is important. Yet it is impossible to not use cars, trucks and other such modes of transport at the same time, so research is necessary. I worry about F-T's cost, especially for rural and regional areas, which will have less ease in moving to electrified transport.

F-T might be part of the solution, especially in removing these poisons from our air. Increasing the market-share of electrified public transport (trains and trams) and then improving the electricity sources (clean coal, nuclear, sequestered coal) is the best way to improve things.

Mike Clarke has produced a credible statement for an alternative fuel source by any measure. The only criticism might be that he has confined it to coal and not addressed gas which represents a vastly cleaner alternative to using coal or shale.

One can use emotive criticisms but it does not undermine the fact that the FT technology is vastly more efficient than the use of what amounts to using foodstuffs for fuel that in the end are subsidised by the taxpayer. It has emotive appeal to tag these as renewable resources and they might be cleaner but they all require vastly more energy, notably the use of sugar cane or starch to produce ethanol, than is produced (never mind the damage to the vastly more valuable Barrier reef by the leaching of fertilisers). Ethanol and the other biofuels are simply 'economically inefficient' to manufacture. Not surprisingly the recent push for its use in petrol has required extensive subsidies paid by us taxpayers by way of payment to the venturers and exemptions from excise (which is a form of assistance).

Biofuels are a nonsense only workable when the assistance to the rural sector needs to be disguised as with ethanol, here as in Brazil.

Mike's article is remiss in not exploring the use of gas (LNG), notably from stranded gasfields with a low opportunity value.

Academics like the good professor are strong on hitting the assistance needed button, but they forget it is us that pay for it with real and substantive economic costs. Biofuels will always remain a niche activity unless political expediency to prop up the sugar industry costing us already $65 million per year apart from the allocations to the venturers.

Congratulations Mike for a good expose. Perhaps you might acknowledge gas as a superior alternative than coal however.

Cheap liquid transport fuel is an aberration even in our modern times.

I must agree when Mike Clark concludes in his article “If Australia is to avoid a depression brought on by liquid fuel shortages coupled with excessive fuel costs, then it must develop alternative liquid fuel resources based on its plentiful solid fossil fuel reserves as quickly as possible” .

Also a rigorous discussion on greenhouse issues resulting from the introduction of F-T technologies here is somewhat out of place considering that every one must start thinking about peddling their cars to work soon.

Mike however remains quite academic on the practical side of producing F-T alternatives to our existing oil refineries. Big questions remain. For instance; who wants anything other than bio diesel? And where are all the skilled technicians needed for upgrading our coal to gas to oil?

I could also ask what happens to background radiation in coal slag dumps after processing. But that’s nit picking a good article.

Perhaps detractors thinking only about increases in CO2 should return to times when we had to live right on the job what ever it was and where ever it was. I can relate to folks who worked their hearts out in the days of steam power building railways between towns without roads after WW2.

There is another argument in favor of converting coal to gas or gas to oil and it’s about replacing all those plastics we take for granted now.

Perhaps wood can again fill the gaps.

Tas, I think you’re spot on.

Getting Australia through the forthcoming peak oil scenario with a gentle downtrend instead of societal collapse is vastly more important than worrying about greenhouse gas emissions. If we can turn coal into liquid transport fuel at a non-prohibitively expensive price, then we should do it, regardless of emission quality.

Even if emissions were highly unhealthy, we should go for it. Much better that than societal collapse or something close to it. As it is, general health aspects appear good with this technology.

So why haven’t we launched into it? What’s the catch? O of course, petroleum is still affordable, and our government is not going to act until it has to react to a crisis, as always. Its time then to tell them that a crisis looms large. O yes, some of us have been telling them that for some time now. O well, they’ll react to a crisis when the crisis becomes full-blown then, then.

A good article Mike. I agree with your conclusion, except for one point; I think we are in for much more than ‘just’ a depression as fuel prices rise. This will potentially lead to collapsed businesses, massive job losses, food shortages as lines of transport break down, rapid inflation and in short the collapse of society as we know it. So I think the urgency to implement your ideas is somewhat greater than you state.