Coal can be converted into gasoline and diesel fuel for about $1 a gallon, Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer said Friday at South Carolina State University in Orangeburg.

German researchers Franz Fischer and Hans Tropsch developed the technology in 1923, and it has been used in South Africa for decades. Germany and Japan used it extensively during World War II.

But most nations have ignored the technology, as well as wind, solar and other alternative forms of energy because Mideast oil was plentiful and cheap.

Until now. “There’s more demand than production,” Schweitzer said. Prices are rising, and there’s no indication they’ll decline significantly in the near future.

Wearing his trademark suit jacket, blue jeans and bolo necktie, the Democratic governor delivered the opening address at the James E. Clyburn University Transportation, Research and Conference Center’s inaugural Environmental Policy Institute.

When President Bush speaks of America’s “addiction to oil,” he merely acknowledges the obvious, Schweitzer said. What’s needed are solutions and a firm commitment to pursue them.

America imported 48 percent of its fuel needs in the 1970s, when an oil crisis prompted calls for research and development of alternative energy sources, Schweitzer said. But there was no follow-through, and today America imports 60 percent of its fuel needs. The biggest percentage comes from Canada. “We can count on them,” Schweitzer said.

“From that good neighbor, it goes to hell in a handbasket: Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran, Libya, Algeria, Nigeria, Angola and a bunch of countries that end with -stan,” he said.

Most of them do not share the American values of freedom, democracy and free enterprise, he said.

“If you live naked in a tree and eat nuts, you’re not part of the problem. God bless you,” Schweitzer said. But as for the rest of us, our dollars end up in the wallets and Swiss bank accounts of dictators and their cronies, including a few who militantly oppose the U.S. and its values.

They’re smart, too. Back in the 1970s, farmers angry at the oil sheikhs warned, “You’ve got the oil but we have the food,” Schweitzer said.

Realizing the truth of that statement, a Saudi Arabian king launched a successful, six-year crash program to become self-sufficient in food production. They remain so today, Schweitzer said.

But the U.S., on the other hand, has increased its dependence on foreign oil, and now it’s embroiled in a war in Iraq, he said, adding that he is reminded of its cost every time he attends a funeral for a Montanan who is killed in the war.

If all U.S. crop acreage committed for exports were to be redirected to the production of canola, safflower, camelina and other crops for biofuel or ethanol, the nation could reduce its oil imports by one-third, Schweitzer said.

Conservation methods could cut oil imports significantly, said the governor, who gets 42 miles per gallon of alternative diesel fuel in his Volkswagen Jetta.

Turning coal into motor vehicle fuel could reduce oil imports by one-third, without the carbon dioxide, mercury and sulfur emissions typical of a conventional coal-fired electric generation facility, he said.

The coal is heated under pressure until it becomes a gas, then it is reconstituted into whatever fuel is desired, he said.

“We can make this fuel for a dollar a gallon,” Schweitzer said. And it doesn’t produce the sulfury smell of conventional diesel fuel or produce black smoke out of the tailpipe, he said.

Rounding out the picture are other energy sources.

The governor said skeptics scoffed at his wind plant — “They said, it’s OK if you want to be a hippie” — until it began producing electricity for $38 a megawatt, compared to $41 a megawatt for a brand-new, state-of-the-art conventional coal-fired plant.

“We can do the same with solar,” Schweitzer added.

Polls indicate 95 percent of Montanans have heard of their first-year governor’s alternative energy proposals, and when asked whether those ideas should be pursued, “eight out of nine said, ’Giddy-up,’” Schweitzer said.

But it’s going to take a new generation of mathematicians, scientists and especially engineers to “giddy-up” and solve the technological challenges of meeting the nation’s energy needs in the future, he said.

“Right now it’s just words,” Schweitzer said. “We need action. And action requires commitment.”

He challenged the 100 or so Orangeburg-Wilkinson High School students in attendance to aspire to be “the next Tommy Edison or the next Benny Franklin.”

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