A Letter from the President

The global energy industry is facing some dramatic and unprecedented challenges.

Since 1981, new global oil discoveries have not in any single year been sufficient to replace yearly oil demand.

Not since the 1970s has the possibility of insufficient oil supplies presented itself as a realistic threat to the stability of the economy.

We are now facing a situation where supply constraints are again probable. But this time those constraints are not just political or logistical, they are geological.

Although much debate rages on the topic of the limits of oil production, one underlying truth seems painfully obvious: you can not produce what you have not discovered .

Without entering into a lengthy discussion of the topic, with the current prices of oil, this lack of discoveries is certainly not for lack of trying.

If we can not discover more than we produce, then global reserves are obviously being depleted, at an extremely rapid rate, and if new sources of fuels for our transportation infrastructure are not brought on-line, fuels will become increasingly scarce and expensive, severely damaging the world economy which is currently utterly and completely dependant on plentiful supplies of cheap oil.

50% of our global oil supply comes from just 120 giant oilfields. Half of those have been producing for 40 years or more, and 95% of those have been in production for more then 25 years.

Decline rates on these old and irreplaceable giant fields are rapidly and irreversibly accelerating.

The bottom line is that we are no longer able to find enough new oil to meet the transportation fuel needs upon which our way of life depends, and our existing infrastructure can not keep pace with our insatiable demand for fuels.

We, as a civilization, have two options: Think outside the box, adapt, innovate, work the problem, and find a solution…, or ignore and deny the issue until it explodes as a global crisis, and we are forced to accept the severe economic consequences of putting off a response.

American Clean Coal Fuels exists to provide a part of the solution.

Work the problem

Real alternatives to oil do exist. Generally, they just have not been deployed yet. It has been said that there is no silver bullet that can solve our energy supply problem, but there are a lot of silver BBs.

The directors of American clean coal fuels have been supporting the development of intelligent, clean, and efficient energy solutions since as early as the 1980s.

With the increasing scarcity of oil, and the process cost improvements that have been achieved through many years and billions of collective dollars of research and development, a real large-scale alternative to dependence on oil is now ready to move from the R&D lab and early limited use in specialized applications, to the real world in large-scale commercialization. This technology is clean coal-to-liquids conversion.

Find a solution

By combining advanced clean coal gasification technology and Fischer-Tropsch coal-to-liquids conversion, American Clean Coal Fuels is working to make coal a big part of the new sources of ultra-clean fuels required to power the global economy as it transitions from absolute dependence on conventional oil production.

Adapt and Innovate

The world energy economy is at something of an inflexion point. Conventional oil has been the energy source of choice for so long that its supply and abundance are largely taken for granted by most members of society.

That assumption is about to be shattered.

We can either replace our use of oil with something else, or figure out a way to do without (Something that is currently an impossibility in anything resembling a business-as-usual case for our economy).

How we chose to meet this challenge will define the viability of our economy, the impact we have on the environment, and whether our children and grandchildren will be able to enjoy the same quality of life we enjoy today.

It is my belief that accompanying such a challenge, one with myriad potential solutions, is a rather profound opportunity to improve the way in which we produce and use energy to minimize our impact on the environment, and ensure that we will have ongoing access to the basic necessities that make modern life possible.

It is clear that fossil fuels are a finite and valuable resource. And coal IS a fossil fuel.

Ultimately we as a society have no choice but to adapt and make the difficult transition to renewable sources of energy. However, our economy is currently not structured in such a way, and technology is not currently in place, to make doing this rapidly enough to avoid substantial economic dislocation (read: recession or worse) from lack of fuels or disruption of infrastructure a viable option at this time. Making renewables a realistic alternative for transportation fuels is a primary element of the many changes that will be taking place as the world economy seeks a balance between the needs of society and the resources that are available to us.

What we need is a bridge. A fuel source that will keep us moving as we set out to do what we do best: innovate.

What we seek to do with the projects we are developing is help to provide this bridge. Coal has the real potential to be a major part of the transitional fuels mix as the global economy is slowly weaned off of its oil addiction, towards increasing use of renewable options for our transportation needs.

Based on all of the research we have done, Coal-to-liquids is the best environmentally sound option available TODAY for producing a substantial portion of the energy required to run the world economy in a viable manner, and may well be the ONLY resource currently available which is sufficiently large to begin to match a global demand from an economy which currently requires over 3.5 BILLION gallons of oil EACH DAY, just to keep operating.

I am excited to be helping drive the creation of this new industry.

The development times on these projects from concept to completion are currently around 5 years. We are working with Nations, states, engineers, suppliers, and regulators to bring these projects to market, and to reduce this development lead-time as much as possible.

Stay tuned to the projects section of our website for updates on how our development efforts are going. Because of the complex, detailed, and sensitive nature of some of the early development work, we can not always release everything that we are working on, but we will provide updates on project progress, and links to news as soon as it is made public.

Please keep in mind that because of the magnitude of these projects and the amount of engineering and design work involved in each, there may be some substantial gaps between new news releases, but we will be hard at work driving the development forward.

What I can share at this point is that we are near the beginning of conceptual engineering and design work on two major CTL projects, one in the eastern US, and one in the western US. Each project will create a design basis for future plants that is optimized to the regional coal supplies and environmental conditions of these initial reference facilities.

Our western facility will be located in New Mexico , and our eastern facility is being considered on a competitive basis among a number of states.

I expect that we will be able to release more specifics on project location and capacity in the next few months.

Each project will produce at least 20,000 Tons Per Day of ultra-clean synthetic fuels. We may also co-produce ammonia fertilizer and electricity in varying amounts as local economic conditions and needs dictate.

We pledge to work very closely with the communities, policy makers, environmental stewards, regulators, and industry partners in the areas where we are constructing these plants. Together we can help to create a local, clean, secure, and vital industry providing our economy with alternative energy supplies for the future.

Looking Forward,

Stephen Johnson
President
American Clean Coal Fuels