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IMHO this is a waste of time. You are wasting clean energy sources to make dirty ones -- at best a 50-60% loss of energy. And you end up with dirty fuel, that f

IMHO this is a waste of time. You are wasting clean energy sources to make dirty ones -- at best a 50-60% loss of energy. And you end up with dirty fuel, that further produces CO2, in which the cycle repeats, with a net loss. In the near future, cars and trucks will be electric. This is shuffling deckchairs on the titanic. Why not put 100% of your efforts into electric vehicles powered by 100% renewable sources?

theaustinseven 7y ago
Like someone said in another comment, you'll still have existing gas-powered vehicles(current cars, jet aircraft, etc.) for some time, and they have to get that gas somewhere. Better from a net zero source than to add to our carbon debt.
monk_e_boy 7y ago
To buy an electric car i need £20,000 which I don’t have. Even if I had the money or access to credit, I don’t have a parking space near my house, so I can’t charge the car. All fixable things, but will take tens of years. Let me use carbon neutral petrol
- 34k5jo3i4toig 7y ago
  You have 20.5 years until Petrol cars are outlawed in the UK. Best get saving. Also -- this is no such thing is carbon neutral petrol.
  - aeternus 7y ago
    Nothing at all is truly carbon neutral, after all a human took a breath to contemplate it. The idea and processes behind Prometheus are still very interesting and have implications beyond the short-term focus on carbon footprint. This type of process will likely be needed to manufacture fuel on other planets.
rmcginnis 7y ago
If we want to stay below 2 degrees C in warming, we don't have time to replace the existing vehicle fleet (approx. 1.2 billion cars, trucks, buses, etc) with electric vehicles. If we instead replace the fuel, this can be fast enough. Even if all vehicles are electric in the future, this is still the right thing to do now.
- 34k5jo3i4toig 7y ago
  My issue is that this is a step in the wrong direction, it is incentivizing the current dirty status quo. Why would anyone replace their dirty engine if they can feel good about by using your 'cleaned' fuel. I agree we need to do something now, but this is just putting off the inevitable. Re-engineering dirty fuel sources doesn't buy us time to resolve this. It is procrastinating, shuffling titanic deckchairs. The main advantage of this tech I can see is making 'primary' sourced fuel illegal, 'secondary' sourced fuel like this prohibitively expensive, and forcing everyone to go pure electric engine by economy.
  - bluGill 7y ago
    The energy density of batteries is nowhere near as good as oil - the laws of physics limit how good batteries can get (there is some room for improvement, but oil is still better by a large margin).
  - stephen_g 7y ago
    We need carbon neutral fuel for shipping and aircraft, so that's one huge application. Especially if it's cleaner burning (no sulfur, aromatics etc.).
tathougies 7y ago
Can you elaborate how gasoline is 'dirty' if the outputs were converted back into the fuel via carbon neutral means? Such technology would make gasoline have no output, since the ouptuts would be reabsorbed. If anything, electric cars, due to the massive environmental damage due to rare earth mineral mining, would be more of an environmental disaster.
- 34k5jo3i4toig 7y ago
  Every cycle has a 50% cost in renewable power. This is close to being carbon neutral, but it is not entirely. Its not a closed loop. You have a growing loss every cycle. Its digging yourself deeper every time.
  - teraflop 7y ago
    It is not energy neutral, but it is carbon neutral (if the electricity input is from a zero-carbon source). It sounds like you're suggesting that burning the fuel releases more carbon than was used to produce it, which isn't possible.
  - tathougies 7y ago
    The claim is renewable energy is not carbon neutral? Just to be clear -- you realize carbon can neither be created nor destroyed by any industrial process available to mankind?
  - mrep 7y ago
    Well of course it's not 100% energy efficient. Nothing we do is 100% efficient because we cannot escape the second law of thermodynamics (entropy).

theaustinseven 7y ago

Like someone said in another comment, you'll still have existing gas-powered vehicles(current cars, jet aircraft, etc.) for some time, and they have to get that gas somewhere. Better from a net zero source than to add to our carbon debt.

monk_e_boy 7y ago

To buy an electric car i need £20,000 which I don’t have. Even if I had the money or access to credit, I don’t have a parking space near my house, so I can’t charge the car. All fixable things, but will take tens of years. Let me use carbon neutral petrol

34k5jo3i4toig 7y ago
You have 20.5 years until Petrol cars are outlawed in the UK. Best get saving. Also -- this is no such thing is carbon neutral petrol.
- aeternus 7y ago
  Nothing at all is truly carbon neutral, after all a human took a breath to contemplate it. The idea and processes behind Prometheus are still very interesting and have implications beyond the short-term focus on carbon footprint. This type of process will likely be needed to manufacture fuel on other planets.

rmcginnis 7y ago

If we want to stay below 2 degrees C in warming, we don't have time to replace the existing vehicle fleet (approx. 1.2 billion cars, trucks, buses, etc) with electric vehicles. If we instead replace the fuel, this can be fast enough. Even if all vehicles are electric in the future, this is still the right thing to do now.

34k5jo3i4toig 7y ago
My issue is that this is a step in the wrong direction, it is incentivizing the current dirty status quo. Why would anyone replace their dirty engine if they can feel good about by using your 'cleaned' fuel. I agree we need to do something now, but this is just putting off the inevitable. Re-engineering dirty fuel sources doesn't buy us time to resolve this. It is procrastinating, shuffling titanic deckchairs. The main advantage of this tech I can see is making 'primary' sourced fuel illegal, 'secondary' sourced fuel like this prohibitively expensive, and forcing everyone to go pure electric engine by economy.
- bluGill 7y ago
  The energy density of batteries is nowhere near as good as oil - the laws of physics limit how good batteries can get (there is some room for improvement, but oil is still better by a large margin).
- stephen_g 7y ago
  We need carbon neutral fuel for shipping and aircraft, so that's one huge application. Especially if it's cleaner burning (no sulfur, aromatics etc.).

tathougies 7y ago

Can you elaborate how gasoline is 'dirty' if the outputs were converted back into the fuel via carbon neutral means? Such technology would make gasoline have no output, since the ouptuts would be reabsorbed. If anything, electric cars, due to the massive environmental damage due to rare earth mineral mining, would be more of an environmental disaster.

34k5jo3i4toig 7y ago
Every cycle has a 50% cost in renewable power. This is close to being carbon neutral, but it is not entirely. Its not a closed loop. You have a growing loss every cycle. Its digging yourself deeper every time.
- teraflop 7y ago
  It is not energy neutral, but it is carbon neutral (if the electricity input is from a zero-carbon source). It sounds like you're suggesting that burning the fuel releases more carbon than was used to produce it, which isn't possible.
- tathougies 7y ago
  The claim is renewable energy is not carbon neutral? Just to be clear -- you realize carbon can neither be created nor destroyed by any industrial process available to mankind?
- mrep 7y ago
  Well of course it's not 100% energy efficient. Nothing we do is 100% efficient because we cannot escape the second law of thermodynamics (entropy).