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...the general fuel is going to be sold and re-burned means this is at best carbon neutral, so from a cynical environmentalist point of view, what's the point?

by tofof 7y ago

...the general fuel is going to be sold and re-burned means this is at best carbon neutral, so from a cynical environmentalist point of view, what's the point? This can't help anyone unless you pump the synth-gas into the ground and sequester it... The status quo today is that we are removing carbon from the ground and putting it into the air. This replaces those fuels that currently come out of the ground. It's still a big win, even if it's technically only carbon neutral. Even electric vehicles aren't carbon neutral, because they're mostly charged by coal power. Also: you suggest the synth-gas should be pumped into the ground. What would be the point of converting the carbon dioxide to alcohol to gasoline and spending electricity to do it? At a minimum you could just pump at the alcohol stage.

solarkraft 7y ago
An EV makes several times the motion from the same energy input. > Even electric vehicles aren't carbon neutral, because they're mostly charged by coal power.Even electric vehicles aren't carbon neutral, because they're mostly charged by coal power. Is thus an invalid/irrelevant argument. I can get excited about jet fuel however, since battery powered planes are considerably less practical than their traditional counter parts with the current technology.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- Robotbeat 7y ago
  This is a completely accurate comment. Why is it downvoted? I assume the company is operating in the US. In the US only 27% of electricity is from coal and falling. https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.php?t=epmt_1_01 https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.ph... And in California (where nearly half of the US's electric vehicles reside--with EVs achieving a nearly 8% market share last year among light vehicles), it's MUCH less than that. There's only a single, tiny 63MW coal co-generation plant in the state, so coal power is less than 1% of California electricity. > Even electric vehicles aren't carbon neutral, because they're mostly charged by coal power. Additionally, it's absurd to compare two consumers of electricity, both of which are flexible with respect to time of consumption, and just arbitrarily say one is mostly coal power (which is false) and the other isn't. We definitely need carbon neutral or even carbon negative industrial processes. I kind of question the logic of going for fuels versus more valuable non-fuel feedstocks, however. A maybe 50% efficient conversion of electricity to alcohols with a typical 20% energy conversion of fuels to mechanical power gives you about an order of magnitude less efficiency than battery-electric. And if you ARE insistent on making carbon neutral fuels: Makes more sense to focus on things that are super hard to electrify, like long-haul aircraft and transoceanic shipping and maybe heating fuels for the far north (where air source heat pumps lose their effectiveness in January). But I'm glad an electrochemical process is being developed, here. Electrolysis and related processes are much preferable, IMHO, than the more common thermal processes.
  - jonnycomputer 7y ago
    If this process were to only make transoceanic shipping carbon neutral it would be well worth it.
    - erobbins 7y ago
      Except fuel oil used in shipping is like $1 per gallon or something similarly low.
      - dodobirdlord 7y ago
        That said, for bulk low-quality fuel needs like shipping they could reduce costs by skipping the upcycling stage and just burning the alcohol.
mrguyorama 7y ago
>What would be the point of converting the carbon dioxide to alcohol to gasoline and spending electricity to do it? At a minimum you could just pump at the alcohol stage. Sounds like a great idea! My general point is that zero carbon energy sources like wind and solar are at least mildly zero sum, and creating brand new load on them would likely just result in capacity moving over to other producers like natural gas and coal. I guess I don't understand why YC is throwing money at this because I'm not confident there's profitability on the horizon, unless they nail down mind bogglingly large scale of production of aviation fuel, Meanwhile, if San Fran is looking to dump money on (IMO) nebulous and green projects, give me money and I'll plant 100k trees
- throwaway5752 7y ago
  Not sure how in the last 10 years after the last gas shock that people have forgotten the petroleum is a finite resource that we are going through rapidly. If you read E&P announcements and various P2/P3 reserve estimates of existing resources and measure those against daily global consumption it is pretty alarming. Presuming stable petroleum input prices may not be a reasonable assumption.
- rmcginnis 7y ago
  We'll need a lot more wind and solar, so Prometheus will drive the expansion of these. We'll start out taking intermittent power that's low cost (wind at midnight, for example), but will soon have resources built for us to expand. This will be good for displacing other fossil fuel use (other than transportation), as we will be increasing the availability of renewable power, and also solving the problem of being able to use the excess (we can be seen as a kind of grid storage).
  - mrguyorama 7y ago
    Wouldn't you have to really be paying above market rates to "drive" the expansion of renewables? Any thoughts about essentially building/running your own renewable power facilities?
    - 7y ago
tlb 7y ago
California electricity is only 1% coal. 52% is natural gas and 40% is carbon-free. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_California https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_California. Most growth is in renewables.
- mamon 7y ago
  The world is bigger than just California, and I thought that SV startups target "world dominance" by default :)
  - tlb 7y ago
    Most advanced economies are phasing out coal. Worldwide it's less than 30% of power generation. Also, fuel is fairly transportable. You can produce the fuel wherever renewable electricity is most available, and sell it worldwide. The economics are comparable to aluminum, where a large fraction of the world's supply is produced adjacent to geothermal power stations. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Iceland#Aluminium https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Iceland#Aluminium

femto 7y ago

So the plan is to only use excess renewable energy that otherwise wouldn't get produced and consumed? If not wouldn't you be a net carbon generator, as you would be burning fossil fuels and releasing carbon in order to capture a lesser amount of carbon in your process? What steps are in place to prevent the process from displacing other renewable use? Take the fact that it is less than 100% efficient to store renewable energy as gasoline. Others might make more efficient use of this renewable energy by immediately using it to displace fossil fuels, with no or lower storage losses. Under this scenario Prometheus is again a net carbon generator. (edit: The same dilemma is faced by any other type of storage.) It strikes me that Prometheus will come into its own if it can guarantee that it doesn't displace more efficient users. This will happen when fossil fuel usage becomes negligible or we (as a society) come up with a sophisticated energy scheduling algorithm that can take account of efficiency. It comes back to that fact that whilst it is green to replace fossil with renewable energy, it's even greener if we can increase efficiency and avoid consuming that energy in the first place. Don't get me wrong, correctly used it's a great thing you are doing.

LamaOfRuin 7y ago
Allocating commodity resources efficiently is what capitalist economies are actually pretty good at. A couple of scenarios where this is ideal: 1. Located close to intermittent renewable generation that is already hooked up to the grid, especially in places like California where intermittent renewables can already push generation beyond load at peak times and result in near zero or negative prices, this can soak up electricity usefully in a way that displaces other carbon emitting fuel. 2. Deployed along with intermittent renewables in the most optimal places for generation, where connection to the grid is impossible, inefficient, or will simply take time. This can soak up the most efficient possible generation of deployable renewables which would make otherwise uneconomical utility scale deployment viable. Both of these are scenarios that our capitalist market system should work well to optimize for assuming the electricity->fuel technology reaches suitable efficiency (and not before then).