FY 2008 Budget Cut $100 Million for Coal to Liquid Fuel Project
HARRISBURG, Pennsylvania (ENS) - Pennsylvania Governor Edward Rendell is asking President George W. Bush to restore funding in the federal budget for development of the nation’s first plant designed to convert waste coal into zero-sulfur diesel fuel.
A promised, $100 million, no-interest loan to help with construction and startup costs for the $800 million plant in Schuylkill County was removed from the proposed federal budget that was released on Monday.
The loan was promised by the Department of Energy in 2003.
The plant operator, Waste Management and Processors Inc., began preliminary work at the site in the fall of 2006 and was preparing to start construction this spring.
'The president, in his State of the Union address, promised to promote clean coal technologies and lead the charge for cutting America’s reliance on oil, but his new budget instead cuts funding for a very promising solution to our energy needs,' Governor Rendell said.
'I am calling on the president to reverse course, keep his word and restore the funding for America’s first waste-coal-to-diesel plant.'
The proposed plant would convert 1.7 million tons of waste coal per year into 60 million gallons of non-petroleum based liquid fuel. Forty million gallons of the total is planned to be converted into zero-sulfur diesel fuel and 20 million gallons into naptha, a gasoline production feedstock.
'We are doing far more than simply funding research,' Governor Rendell said. 'We have assembled a coalition of government and private businesses that will purchase nearly all the product generated by the plant for the next 10 years, guaranteeing that this new technology will have the opportunity to survive and compete in the energy marketplace.'
U.S. Senator Arlen Specter and Congressman Tim Holden, whose district encompasses the plant, have worked toward development of this project for nearly a decade. Governor Rendell promised to work with both of them, along with newly-elected U.S. Senator Robert Casey Jr. and the rest of Pennsylvania’s congressional delegation, to coordinate a united, bipartisan effort to restore funding for the plant.
In addition to creating liquid fuels to reduce imports of foreign oil, the proposed plant would - at no cost to the taxpayers - reclaim dangerous abandoned mine sites and remove waste coal piles that pollute waterways.
Pennsylvania has over two billion tons of waste coal, and more than 180,000 acres of abandoned mine lands left over by the unregulated mining practices of the past.
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