2007 DOE ADVANCED FOSSIL ENERGY  PROJECTS

Mesaba Energy Project (MEP-I, LLC): Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle (IGCC)--coal2oil--Plant
Minnesota is the proposed location for this project, which plans to build a state-of-the-art IGCC (coal2oil)  plant that would allot space in its design for CO2 capture and storage. Mississippi Power Company: IGCC (coal-to-oil) Plant
Mississippi is the proposed location for this project, which plans to build a IGCC (coal-to-oil) plant that would commercialize a first-of-its-kind application.

The above two IGCC (coal-to-oil) projects would allow for potential CO2 capture in the future, would provide state-of-the-art emission controls far exceeding the emission level requirements specified in Section 1703 of the Energy Policy Act of 2005 and would help reduce cost and increase fuel flexibility of coal-to-oil technology.

TX Energy, LLC: Coal to Synthetic Gas IGCC Plant Texas is the proposed location for this project, which plans to commercialize a new polygeneration gasification facility that can isolate a significant concentrated stream of CO2 while producing large amounts of power and methanol.

VENTURE CAPITAL (VC)

VC flows into the coal-to-oil (coal2oil) industry. In Russia, according to The St. Petersburg Times, 10/23/07, "Dutch entrepreneur Roel Pieper, who manages investment company ETIRC, plans to invest more than a $100 million in Irkutsk...to convert coal-to-oil." 

As oil approaches the $125.00 mark (5/17/08), BP is now investing in coal-to-oil (coal2oil) ultra-clean conversion energy in China. "BP could expand petrochemicals joint venture with China's Sinopec By Simon Hall Last Update: 5:19 AM ET Nov 5, 2007Print E-mail Subscribe to RSS Disable Live Quotes BEIJING (MarketWatch) -- China's booming demand for petrochemicals and transport fuels is prompting BP Plc (BP:bp plc sponsored adr News, chart, profile, more Last: 79.48+0.69+0.88% 9:54am 11/06/2007 Delayed quote dataAdd to portfolio Analyst Create alertInsider Discuss Financials Sponsored by: BP 79.48, +0.69, +0.9%) to look for possible further investments in petrochemicals and refining, as well as opportunities in the coal-to-liquids sector, a senior official with the company said. BP is considering whether to add additional production capacity to a joint ethylene cracker venture it has with China Petroleum & Chemical Corp. (SNP:china pete & chem corp spon adr h shs News, chart, profile, more Last: 141.18+0.57+0.41% 9:53am 11/06/2007 Delayed quote dataAdd to portfolio Analyst Create alertInsider Discuss Financials Sponsored by: SNP 141.18, +0.57, +0.4%) , better known as Sinopec, in Shanghai, and a decision on this could be made in early 2008, John Morgan, BP Group Technology senior vice president, told Dow Jones Newswires. The official strongly denied suggestions that BP may be considering selling its stake in the Shanghai ethylene cracker, known as the Shanghai Secco Petrochemical Co. BP has a 50% stake in the US$2.7 billion venture, which dates back to November 2001, and which has the capability to produce 900,000 metric tons of ethylene a year. "BP and Sinopec are looking seriously at an expansion," although there are "no decisions at the moment. We hope a decision will be taken at the beginning of 2008," Morgan said. A capacity expansion of up to 25-30% might be feasible, he said, although he declined to go into detail. He also expected more investment in China's petrochemicals sector, including Purified Terephthalic Acid, or PTA - a chemical product used in plastics, electronics and construction - in which BP has "very environmentally efficient, competitive, and low-cost technology". Although BP reported falling profits in the third quarter due to lower margins for refining and petrochemical products, at a time of surging oil prices, he believed "prices of oil derivatives will go up over a time, otherwise no one will invest." BP will be very happy to invest in refining in China if the opportunity comes, he said, and added China's economic planning agency, the National Development and Reform Commission "is prepared to allow foreign investment if foreign partners can bring crudes and advanced technologies". He declined to comment on whether BP has been talking with Sinopec and Kuwait Petroleum Corp. on jointly investing in a refining plant in southern Chinese city of Guangzhou. BP is interested in the coal-to-liquids business in China, including methanol, dimethyl ether, or DME, and diesel, but its plans are still at a "very early" stage, Morgan said. Any BP investment in coal-to-liquids is dependent on the Chinese government clarifying the regulations governing the sector, he added. The government is still to take a position on whether to permit methanol or DME produced from coal to be used as transport fuel. There are health concerns about methanol and the potential damage to, or cost of new engines required to use it. "It will be difficult to make investment decisions on coal before the Chinese government makes clear regulations in this area," he said. BP is talking to major Chinese companies, like
Shenhua Group Corp the country's largest coal producer, on coal-to-oil (coal2oil) technology, but no formal partnerships have been formed, he said. Shenhua is now building China's first coal-to-oil (coal2oil)complex in the northern region of Inner Mongolia, which is expected to start production early next year. It is designed to produce around 3 million tons of fuel, mainly diesel. Also, in the northern region of Ningxia, Shenhua is building a methanol plant with annual output capacity of 250,000 tons and a DME plant with an annual capacity of 210,000 tons. Many years ago BP did a study in the U.S. and Germany on using methanol as a transport fuel which showed it could be used safely, although there hasn't been any major development work on methanol-fueled vehicles, he said. "If China chooses to use methanol as vehicle fuel, we are very happy to work with China, both on regulation and technologies," he said. BP has invested around US$4.23 billion in China so far, including a liquefied natural gas terminal in the southern province of Guangdong and development of a natural gas field in South China Sea and its Shanghai petrochemicals venture. "We hope to continue our investment both in existing and potential businesses (in China), including coal, but it depends on opportunities," he said.  

HISTORICAL ANALYSIS

CleanCoal.com.au: Coal to Oil Coal 2 Oil Explained. The lack of stability in the Middle East and demand pressures from India and China has caused dramatic increases in the price of oil which has affected the global economy. However there are alternative resources that can be used for the production of oil – the main ones being black and brown coal. It just so happens that Australia and particularly the Latrobe Valley and Gippsland Basin in Victoria have some 500+ years of low cost, low sulfur, high moisture Brown Coal that is ideal for conversion to quality gasoline, aviation fuel and carbon fibers. The history of ‘coal 2 oil’ is not unlike the VHS v Beta phenomena whereby Beta had the best tape product but marketing and circumstances of the day lead VHS to dominate as the commercial product of choice. In ‘coal 2 oil’ there are two main technologies – 1) Fischer-Tropsch (VHS) & 2) Bergius Hydrogenation (Beta) ECT’s unique de-watering ‘Coldry’ process is applicable to both technologies; however we are proposing to pursue the 2nd and less popular Hydrogenation process which has been developed by the Japanese after many years of testing using Brown Coal from the Latrobe Valley (1988-95). Why are we choosing the less proven process? The reported differences between the processes show that Hydrogenation has a higher yield of petroleum per tonne of coal, lower cost and lower greenhouse output than its Fischer-Tropsch counterpart. Below is an outline of the general processes and the different products produced: Fischer – Tropsch Synthesis (as used by SASOL South Africa) Fischer – Tropsch Natural SynGas (GTL) Fischer – Tropsch BTL (Biomass to Liquid) Fischer – Tropsch CTL (Coal to Liquid) Bergius Hydrogenation Process (Liquefaction Japanese Style) Coal To Liquids (CTL) v Current Crude Oil Refineries CTL Production Costs Latest News - Japan Ready to Move on Coal Liquefaction Fischer – Tropsch Synthesis (as used by SASOL South Africa) This technology evolved in 1925 when Professor Franz Fischer, founding director of the Kaiser-Wilhelm Institute of Coal Research in Germany and his head of department, Dr Hans Tropsch, patented a process to produce liquid hydrocarbons from carbon monoxide gas and hydrogen using metal catalysts. The hydrocarbons synthesized in the process were made primarily of liquid alkenes (paraffin’s). Other by-products were olefins (basis of all poly plastics & fibers), alcohols, and solid paraffin’s (waxes). The required gas mixture of carbon monoxide and hydrogen - the so called synthesis gas - is created through a reaction of coke or coal with steam and oxygen, at temperatures over 900 degrees C. In the past, town gas and gas for lamps were a carbon monoxide-hydrogen mixture, made by gasifying coke in gas works. In the 1970’s it was replaced with imported natural gas (methane). Coal gasification and Fischer-Tropsch hydrocarbon synthesis together bring about a two-stage sequence of reactions which allows the production of liquid fuels like diesel and petrol out of solid combustible black coal. For indirect coal liquefaction, Fischer-Tropsch Synthesis can be used on all types of coal as well as other raw materials which contain coal. Fischer-Tropsch Synthesis took its first serious place in industry in 1935 at Celanese AG chemical company. By the beginning of the 1940s, some 600,000 tonnes of liquid hydrocarbons were produced per year in German facilities, made from coal using Fischer-Tropsch Synthesis. Just prior to WW II Germany licensed the process to four facilities in Japan, as well as a plant in France and in Manchuria. After WW II, the destruction of most of the production plants and competition from Middle East crude oil made petrol production from coal unprofitable. The only new production facilities built were in South Africa in 1950 in Sasolburg (hence the brand name SASOL). These plants were government backed for political reasons (the apartheid era). Currently, the two plants operated by SASOL represent about 28 % of South Africa's diesel and petrol needs, processing some 45 million tonnes of black coal per year. Fischer – Tropsch Natural SynGas (GTL) Syngas can also be created from natural gas and is less costly than making it from coal. Since 1993, Shell in Malaysia (Bintulu) and PetroSA in South Africa (Mossel Bay) have been operating industrial Fischer-Tropsch Synthesis facilities, which produce liquid fuels from syngas (Gas To Liquid, GTL). A third similar plant is being built by SASOL and Qatar Petroleum in Qatar in the Persian Gulf. In 2005, nine more GTL-facilities were being planned world-wide; most of them using Fischer-Tropsch Synthesis. Fischer – Tropsch BTL (Biomass to Liquid) For a number of years German companies have been developing processes to create liquid fuels from biomass (Biomass to Liquid, BTL) the most notable among them being Future Energy GmbH which uses Fischer-Tropsch Synthesis. The syngas is produced from wood, straw, and other raw materials of plant origin. Fischer – Tropsch CTL (Coal to Liquid) Given the quick rise in the price of crude oil which some analysts forecast to hit USD$100 bbl by Xmas 2006 combined with the current Lebanon situation and the dramatic consequences of the last hurricane season for American oil producers and processors - the Bush Administration is rethinking how it deals with its large domestic coal inventory. In 2006 the first US coal-to-diesel production facility is planned in Gilberton, Pennsylvania. It will use indirect coal liquefaction (CTL), via coal gasification and Fischer-Tropsch. China, too, has been investing in CTL technology using indirect Fischer-Tropsch Synthesis / black coal. Significantly in 2002 China began planning a commercial coal liquefaction plant using the Japanese version of the Bergius /coal hydrogenation process in Inner Mongolia with commissioning expected in 2008. Bergius Hydrogenation Process (Liquefaction Japanese Style) The second method (direct coal liquefaction) was invented a few years before Fischer-Tropsch, in 1913 in Hanover by Friedrich Bergius. Coal hydrogenation, aka coal liquefaction, involves converting coal into an oil (like crude oil), that can be processed in refineries to make petrol. The Bergius process, however, works best with Brown Coal and "geologically young" black coal. Coal To Liquids (CTL) v Current Crude Oil Refineries Coal liquefaction, by whichever route, is capital intensive and therefore benefits substantially from economies of scale. Most studies on process economics have assumed that a full-scale commercial plant would produce 50,000 - 100,000 bbl/day of liquid products. Such a plant would process 15,000 - 35,000 tonnes/day of black coal or up to double that amount of brown coal. Such output is still small relative to that from a typical modern crude oil refinery, where throughput in excess of 200,000 bbl/day is common. The economics of CTL depend strongly on coal costs and this coal must be delivered to the plant at a low price – this is the advantage of Victorian brown coals. Since coal is more difficult to transport than oil, it would, as a general principle, be better for CTL to be carried out in the country of origin and preferably close to the resource. CTL Production Costs The use of the Hydrogenation process and low cost brown coal (USD $4/t) and ECT’s front end ‘Coldry’ drying / de-watering process is predicted to achieve a production cost of around USD$25 - $30 per barrel (crude oil equivalent) which is a remarkable improvement over the last couple of decades costs. Production costs for the Fischer-Tropsch process using mainly black coal are purported to be around USD$40+/barrel. Latest News - Japan Ready to Move on Coal Liquefaction The following information comes from NEDOL Japan who did much of this work in the Latrobe Valley, Victoria. Announcement on June 12 in Tokyo advised: “Japan plans to provide Asian nations – particularly China – with the technology to liquefy coal as part of a broader effort to reduce global dependence on crude oil.” Through NEDOL they will join with Chinese companies (including Shenhua) “and plan to have a plant operating by around 2010.” “Construction costs are estimated at 100b Yen (USD877m).” “Japan has also entered into talks with the Indonesian government”… “Japan was also considering operating in India and Mongolia.” 

coal2oil updates:

Read Dr. Carlo Kopp: U.S. Air Force coal2oil program,
and Professor Alan Goldman of
Rutgers:coal-to-oil breakthrough, and

Inventor Claims To Have Developed ‘Super Clean’ Coal

By David Crigger/Bristol Herald Courier

Dr. Richard Wolfe describes the process that he has developed before begining his demonstration, recently.

By Michael Owens
Reporter / Bristol Herald Courier
Published: June 8, 2008

LEBANON, Va. – Every few minutes, Richard Wolfe poked his gloved hands into coal dust to remove a block from a pottery kiln’s viewport so he could peer at the metal 55-gallon drum inside.
A steady whoosh of 1,300-degree flames engulfed the weathered drum and its contents, the ingredients for what the scientist called “super clean” coal.
“What we’re doing is taking the coal apart and putting it back better than it was naturally,” he told his audience of four coal industry insiders who met with him on a recent Saturday in a dusty barn in Lebanon, Va.
Wolfe, the son of a West Virginia coal miner and a former Abingdon-based coal researcher now residing in North Carolina, calls the end result “carbonite,” a glossy chunk of rock that looks more like a burned brownie than coal.
He said it burns hotter than coal and can power generators that make electricity, but without spewing as much carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the air as regular coal.
The same chunk also could be used in the steel industry, home heating or even water purification.
Simply put, carbonite is the combination of two types of coals heated at high temperatures with a secret catalyst. Wolfe declined to name the catalyst because he intends to patent both the process and the product.
It’s Wolfe’s environmentally friendly answer to today’s skyrocketing oil prices.
Last year, United Nations scientists concluded that greenhouse emissions have to be cut in half by 2050 to avoid a worldwide temperature rise. Wolfe said his product could go toward cutting those emissions.
The byproduct of Wolfe’s kiln-based cooking process is methane gas, the main ingredient for natural gas, which often is used to fire steam boilers at electric plants. The orange-yellow methane gas could be seen through the kiln viewport rising from the drum after less than an hour into the burning process.
It’s one byproduct that can be scraped from carbonite for resale.
Gas to power cars and oil – just like the black gold shipped from the Middle East – can be extracted from the carbonite. After all, oil eventually becomes coal, Wolfe explained. What sets carbonite apart is that it produces 25 percent less carbon dioxide than natural coal, half as much sulphur dioxide and no mercury.
The gas and oil are two more byproducts to squeeze from Wolfe’s invention. And all of carbonite’s ingredients can be found in Southwest Virginia and other parts of America.
Wolfe, who runs Wolfe Engineering and Consultants in Banner Elk, N.C., researched and perfected the process in labs at West Virginia University over the last two years. He often races from his home and business in North Carolina to business contacts in West Virginia and Southwest Virginia, and sometimes shoots to Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, where he conducts more coal research and consultation.
The right temperatures, burn times and the catalyst were all worked out behind closed university doors.
The final demonstration took place in less-controlled conditions – on an overcast Saturday in May – inside a dusty metal barn once used to manufacture pottery. This is where Wolfe hoped to usher in a new energy age.
The industry insiders who saw the demonstration admit they’ve never seen or heard of anything similar.
“It looks to me like it would have some promise,” Harry Childress, of Cumberland Resources Corp. in Wise County, Va., said in a later telephone interview.
Skepticism and surprise
Though Wolfe’s new creation impressed the audience, news of carbonite elicited only questions from others.
“I’ve never heard of someone scrubbing coal of carbon dioxide,” said Alice McKeown of the environmental group Sierra Club. “I’m a bit skeptical on that part.”
The technology to capture and then store – called sequestration – most of the carbon-dioxide byproduct of burning coal is in the research stages. According to theory, the capture happens after the coal is burned, not before, as is supposed to be the case with carbonite.
Some companies already capture carbon dioxide on a limited scale. Once captured, the byproduct is pumped into already tapped oil fields to force to the surface the last remaining drops of oil.
From an anti-pollution standpoint, wide-scale use of experimental carbon dioxide capture equipment at large coal-burning plants might be too expensive, experts said. Also, whether captured carbon dioxide would remain in underground wells or in the deep sea without escape or disaster remains a scientific mystery.
“It has promise for the future, but it’s not here today,” McKeown said.
For all anyone knows, Wolfe is the first person to scrub any amount of carbon dioxide from coal before it is shipped to the customer.
Internet searches show that Wolfe, who combines a lifetime of coal expertise with a doctorate in nuclear engineering, long has toiled to solve energy problems.
In Russia, he learned how to recycle the waste from burned coal, according to the Web site of Lees-McRae College in Banner Elk, N.C.
Banner Elk is where Wolfe now lives and runs a vineyard, a trade he learned from the Italian miners who settled in West Virginia’s coal country.
Wolfe said his current international adventure includes advising South Africa on ways to reduce the emissions from the coal used there every day to cook meals and warm houses.
Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy, tasked with tracking new technologies in coal and other energy fields, know of Wolfe and his works. He worked there in the 1970s.
What was news to the DOE scientists is the notion of carbon dioxide levels being cut before the coal was burned, said Joe Culver, DOE spokesman.
DOE scientist Tom Feeley noted that the energy world is filled with independent scientists racing to patent the next answer to pollution. Most of them keep quiet about what they have and are like poker players “holding their cards close to the vest” so they win the patent game, Feeley said.
Old meets new
It’s no secret that gasoline can be extracted from coal. The process, called the Fischer-Tropsch synthesis, was developed in the 1920s in Germany, a country poor in petroleum but rich in coal.
In fact, the conversion process fueled Adolf Hitler’s tanks and planes during World War II.
During apartheid, South Africa overcame fuel embargoes by using the Fischer-Tropsch method.
Oil also can be extracted from coal. In fact, oil extraction is the first step toward producing diesel fuel and then gas.
“Coal is oil before it becomes coal,” Wolfe said. “We [the United States] have more coal than Saudi Arabia has oil.”
Most of America’s power plants are fueled by coal.
To overcome constantly spiking gas prices, some states have been forced to rethink energy practices.
Officials in Montana hope a public-private partnership based on the Fischer-Tropsch process is the answer, according to the Billings Gazette newspaper.
China is banking on a coal-to-oil process to be its energy savior, according to the Xinhua News Agency.
The difference with carbonite is the pollution levels – it would be drastically lower than if regular coal was used, Wolfe promises.
But a 25 percent drop in carbon dioxide levels left the Sierra Club’s McKeown unimpressed.
“Twenty five percent is just a drop in the bucket,” she said.
Wolfe disagrees. To him, it’s a large improvement over what exists. His experiment is just the first step toward a new revolution, he says.
The only problem, he said, is finding a financial backer. It might not be an easy obstacle to overcome.
Squeezing gas and oil from coal can be a pricey proposition. The math makes sense only if oil prices rise beyond break-even costs of the gas-from-coal process. It means oil has to cost more than $50 per barrel. The price neared $135 per barrel on Friday and is expected to hit $150 by July 4, according to The Associated Press.
“It’s really tied to the price of oil,” DOE scientist Tom Feeley said. “If [oil prices] come back down, then that’s the risk you take ... you may have lost your market.”
Coal remains a winning solution only if oil prices continue to rise.
America once considered coal to be the light at the end of its tunnel. The federal government funded coal-to-gas research nearly 30 years ago, but backed out after oil prices began to drop.
Wolfe thinks carbonite can beat the odds simply because it can be used in manufacturing steel and in other industries as well as in the energy game. It’s still a money-maker even if oil prices suddenly drop, he said.
“We have the technology. We just need the resolve” to commercialize carbonite and create an independent America, Wolfe said. 

Coal: The Other Black Gold

By Abigail Howlett

June 17, 2008

Source: The Shorthorn, U. Texas-Arlington University of Texas-Arlington researchers are hoping to use a prevalent substance found in Texas to reduce future fuel costs — coal.Funded by the UT System Technology Ignition Fund and the Department of Energy, several UTA engineering professors plan to customize a process in July of converting lignite, a lower grade coal, to oil and have the system in place by August, said Richard Billo, engineering research associate dean.

“In a year or two, we will be able to make a positive impact on the fuel process,” Billo said. “We anticipate gasoline prices will top out between $6-$8 in the next few years before they start coming down.”

A patent pending micro-reactor, which was invented by engineering associate professor Brian Dennis, will help make creating oil from lignite coal faster, smoother and less costly process.

“We are doing experiments to see if that micro-reactor can accelerate a slow process,” Dennis said.

His micro-reactor will be used during a fraction of the process, and he said he hopes it will speed up one of the slower parts of refining.

Dennis, who has worked on the micro-reactor for two years, originally created the reactor for his research in biodiesel and has only recently tried to convert it to lignite coal.

Several years ago, Republican congressman Joe Barton asked some university engineering researchers if they could figure out a way to make a micro-reactor for coal lignite. Billo said Barton wanted to do something about growing gas prices and helped the university get a grant for research.

“With gas prices rising at record rates, we should be working to unlock American energy supplies,” Barton said in an e-mail statement.

“UTA is playing a big role in this process. The exciting work being done by researchers in the Engineering Department at UTA to turn coal into oil could revolutionize the way we generate energy in this country.”

Billo teamed up with West Virginia University because it had an effective system called “The West Virginia Process,” which refines coal through the same process crude petroleum goes through, said Elliot Kennel, West Virginia University carbon product research coordinator.

“Our process is not the only process,” Kennel said. “But we think it is one of the simplest and one of the cheapest.”

By applying the micro-reactor and tailoring “The West Virginia Process” to adapt to Texas’ lignite coal, the researchers hope to improve the current process and lower the cost of oil, Billo said.

Billo said he hopes to build a factory to process the “plentiful supply” of lignite in Texas by next summer.“The [oil] prices will go up, in my opinion, until we bleed ourselves to death or find a substitute. I think we can produce at $30 per barrel,” Kennel said. “The perception has been that government needs to protect the public from new sources of energy.”

 

 

 

Coal: The Other Black Gold

Funded by the UT System Technology Ignition Fund and the Department of Energy, several UTA engineering professors plan to customize a process in July of converting lignite, a lower grade coal, to oil and have the system in place by August, said Richard Billo, engineering research associate dean.

“In a year or two, we will be able to make a positive impact on the fuel process,” Billo said. “We anticipate gasoline prices will top out between $6-$8 in the next few years before they start coming down.”

A patent pending micro-reactor, which was invented by engineering associate professor Brian Dennis, will help make creating oil from lignite coal faster, smoother and less costly process.

“We are doing experiments to see if that micro-reactor can accelerate a slow process,” Dennis said.

His micro-reactor will be used during a fraction of the process, and he said he hopes it will speed up one of the slower parts of refining.

Dennis, who has worked on the micro-reactor for two years, originally created the reactor for his research in biodiesel and has only recently tried to convert it to lignite coal.

Several years ago, Republican congressman Joe Barton asked some university engineering researchers if they could figure out a way to make a micro-reactor for coal lignite. Billo said Barton wanted to do something about growing gas prices and helped the university get a grant for research.

“With gas prices rising at record rates, we should be working to unlock American energy supplies,” Barton said in an e-mail statement.

“UTA is playing a big role in this process. The exciting work being done by researchers in the Engineering Department at UTA to turn coal into oil could revolutionize the way we generate energy in this country.”

Billo teamed up with West Virginia University because it had an effective system called “The West Virginia Process,” which refines coal through the same process crude petroleum goes through, said Elliot Kennel, West Virginia University carbon product research coordinator.

“Our process is not the only process,” Kennel said. “But we think it is one of the simplest and one of the cheapest.”

By applying the micro-reactor and tailoring “The West Virginia Process” to adapt to Texas’ lignite coal, the researchers hope to improve the current process and lower the cost of oil, Billo said.

Billo said he hopes to build a factory to process the “plentiful supply” of lignite in Texas by next summer.

“The [oil] prices will go up, in my opinion, until we bleed ourselves to death or find a substitute. I think we can produce at $30 per barrel,” Kennel said. “The perception has been that government needs to protect the public from new sources of energy.”