Expensive technology

While coal liquefaction is possible, it’s also expensive. A 2012 study led by Christodoulos Floudas, a professor of chemical and biological engineering at Princeton University, concluded it would cost the U.S. on average about $95 a barrel to use a combination of coal, natural gas and non-food crops to make synthetic fuel to replace crude oil — which is now trading around $55 a barrel.

“That’s a steep price, but it’s a far more attractive deal than going without oil altogether,” Paul Musgrave, assistant professor at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, said by email. “It’s the economics that usually make this process unfeasible.”

Bloomberg News