4 ms·
> Let plants deal with the CO2, since they're good at it They aren't good with it at all. Convert CO2 slowly, take space to do that, take other resources like
by avmich 6y ago
> Let plants deal with the CO2, since they're good at it
They aren't good with it at all. Convert CO2 slowly, take space to do that, take other resources like fertilizers, require some shielding from pests and herbs, can produce massive fires... They have advantages, but it's not a silver bullet, especially when you're in a hurry.
- liability 6y agoI believe popular proposals involve the use of algae. Regardless, farming in general is something modern civilization already has a strong competency in. Synthesizing jet fuel from scratch might make sense for the USN since they have nuclear reactors and all the water they want, but I think it's fair to say our civilization in the general case struggles with generating huge amounts of clean electricity. Plants do it with solar energy on a scale we should be jealous of. And so what of they take a few months to do it? They take that long to grow the food you eat too and it's not like you starve for months waiting for them.
- jabl 6y agoSociety uses absolutely mind-gobbling amounts of energy, mostly from fossil fuels. There's just not enough land available to produce even a significant fraction of that from biofuels. Never mind the ecological devastation that would be caused by converting the little wilderness left to intensive biofuel cultivation. That is not to say biofuel don't have a role to play. Agriculture and forestry wastes, municipal biowaste, etc. can all be used for energy. And yeah, it makes sense to use the available biofuel for sectors that are otherwise very hard to decarbonise, such as aviation. Algae, well, that has been researched for decades with very little to show for it. It has great potential, but it seems very difficult to make it actually work.
- liability 6y agoBut this is my point; biofuel makes a ton of sense for aviation. Biofuels would be used in cases where there is no realistic alternative, particularly with airplanes. It's more practical and likely to succeed in this domain than hydrogen, and isn't a total pipe dream like battery powered planes. In other domains, like grid power or automobiles, solar/wind/etc are the way to go (I never suggested we run power plants off biofuel!), but there is still a fuckton of coal and natural gas plants that need to be replaced. Trying to also replace jet fuel with synth fuel at the same time will only set back efforts to close coal and natural gas plants. If we already had a surplus of clean electrical energy then things would be different, but we don't. Every solar farm dedicated to the production of synth fuel is a solar farm that isn't replacing a coal plant. I just don't see any way that synthesis of jet fuel from atmospheric carbon makes any sense for anybody but a nuclear Navy.
- Hypx 6y agoThe problem is twofold: The first is that biofuel doesn't scale. Maybe if we shifted all biofuel production to aviation we could do it. But the market is growing over the long term. Which means biofuels will eventually stop being a solution. The other problem is that biofuel isn't actually all that green. It still needs lots of fertilizer, pesticides, farm equipment, etc., that ultimately gives it a relatively high GHG output. At some point, we need to bite the bullet and go with hydrogen or one of its derivative fuels (e.g. ammonia, methanol, etc.). People are constantly trying to imagine a solution that avoids this outcome, but no one has come up with anything that looks like a viable alternative.
- ncmncm 6y agoMaximum efficiency of 2%. Even the worst electrolysis driven by cheap solar does better.
- liability 6y agoYou've forgotten that we have a limited capacity for solar cell production and those solar cells are put to better use replacing coal plants than synthesizing something plants can synthesize.
- ncmncm 6y agoBiofuel is just very, very expensive. The only reason it is used at all is heavy, heavy subsidies, often connected with corruption. (Cf. Archer-Daniels-Midland.)
- liability 6y agoAnd hydrogen or synth fuel aren't expensive? If these alternatives weren't more expensive then the problem would be moot because the industry would be voluntarily using them already.
- ncmncm 6y agoThey have always been more expensive than petroleum, and anyway would be made with power generated from petroleum or coal, or (in the case of hydrogen) from natural gas. But that was before solar and wind became substantially cheaper than petroleum.