Synthetic Fuels

Virtually every molecule of gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel we use here in our human civilization came from decomposed plants and animals that were on Earth hundreds of millions of years ago.

Within the last decade or so, scientists have performed computer simulations that demonstrate that point sources of carbon dioxide and hydrogen, made from electrolyzing water, can be brought together with large amounts of off-peak energy from wind farms or nuclear plants to create compounds that are chemically identical to those we use to fill our automobiles, cargo ships, and jets.

There are a few nasty problems standing in the way, however:

1) The idea is perceived to be risky, and the company who’s patented the concept hasn’t been able to raise the venture capital required to build a prototype.

2) As mentioned above, the idea requires point sources of CO2, e.g., coal-fired power plants or concrete manufacturing plants, with concentrations of CO2 north of 30%, rather than the air we breathe with concentrations approximately 0.04%. The meme above is pure nonsense.

3) At a certain point I was quite bullish on synthetic fuels, but now it seems that electric transportation is likely to win the day.