The study, requested by US Secretary of Energy Steven Chu, concluded that enhanced coal capture usage could help increase domestic oil production by more than 3.5 million barrels a day for 40-plus years.

By 2035, the combination of coal-based oil recover and coal-to-liquids technology could provide up to 30% of US liquid fuel demand and generate $US200 billion in economic activity, including a million skilled jobs.

The report said an applied strategy to expand coal liquefaction technologies and CO2-based oil recovery would boost US coal use to 1.75 billion tons annually.

Advanced power plants retrofitted to exploit the CO2 would use an additional 300Mt of coal per annum while CO2-based oil recovery plants would use an additional 450Mtpa of coal.

“It's time to think of CO2 as a valuable commodity,” NCC member and study chairman Richard Bajura said.

“Advanced coal technology is key to affordably realizing deep reductions in emissions. The US uses more coal than any nation except China, and potential production of US oil from coal-derived CO2 for [CO2 capture and oil recovery] applications dwarfs other projected new domestic sources.”

NCC member and chairman of the council’s coal policy committee Fred Palmer said CO2-based oil recovery projects were operating profitably even as the rest of the coal industry struggles.

“With a regulatory framework that facilitates the increased deployment of this technology at scale, we can increase use of domestic energy, fuel economic growth and enhance national security,” he said.

Expanding CO2 -based oil recovery can significantly reduce emissions by capturing CO2 from coal-based generation and safely injecting the carbon deep into oil wells, releasing stranded oil that could not be accessed by more conventional drilling methods.

However, the limited availability of CO2 has been a constraint.

The study calls for the capture of carbon dioxide from coal plants and transportation through a robust network of pipelines to accelerate the use of CO2 capture and enhanced oil recovery technology.

NCC found that 18 billion to 31 billion metric tons of additional CO2 could be used in US oil fields over the next 40 years or more, compared to two billion metric tons available from natural sources and natural gas processing.