Researched by Karene Schelert and Daniel DelMonte
A report from the Center for American Progress shows the top five private oil companies spent an average of just one-half of one percent of total profits on renewable fuels. Energy companies such as BP, Standard, ConocoPhillips, Chevron, and others publicly market in their ads and slogans their green sentiments and investiture into alternative energy sources, but their current alternative focus is coal. Big Fuel companies have largely focused their efforts to turn coal into gas or liquid fuel, sometimes called syngas, synoil, or “clean coal.” Environmental Research Foundation, notes that coal, oil, gas, mining industries, and electric utilities, “are eager to get carbon sequestration going,” because, it will benefit them all by “removing the need for substantial innovation and reducing competition from renewable fuels.” The Energy Policy Act of 2005, included some $4 billion in finances for gasification and other “clean-coal” initiatives. Bill Bensel, an organizer with Wyoming’s Powder River Basin Resource Council states, “We’re just trying to show we can be as green as we can, so we can sell more coal.”
“Scrubbing King Coal” James Ridgeway”, Mother Jones, 5/1/2008 http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2008/05/scrubbing-king-coal.html