Few have described the dubious liquid coal technology so accurately as when the Lexington Herald-Leader Editorial Board called it “a new version of snake oil” in their article on June 3, 2007. The debate about CTL is, more often than not, off-topic; instead of focusing on the technology’s shortfalls and potentially disastrous effects on the current trend of global warming, proponents want to talk about how CTL can bring us ‘energy independence’ in an ‘environmentally-friendly’ way. Such an assertion on the part of Kentucky liquid coal champions Senators Jim Bunning (who introduced the 2006 Coal-to-liquid fuels Promotion Act in the U.S. Senate) and Mitch McConnell, as well as former Governor Ernie Fletcher, is both a diversion from the real debate and a falsehood. Liquid coal is not ‘clean’, nor will it likely ever be.
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