3 ms·

Creating fuel from thin air with artificial leaves

16 points by clouddrover 6y ago

leoedin 6y ago
The last part of the article hit on an interesting point, and one I think needs to be more widely recognised. As long as fossil fuels are cheap, innovation won't happen quickly in this area. If fossil fuels were taxed to their true cost, the "prize" for green technologies would be so great it would encourage huge investment, and likely rapid progress. https://concretecuts.xyz/articles/market-driven-green-technology/ https://concretecuts.xyz/articles/market-driven-green-techno...
- AtlasBarfed 6y ago
  I agree. I just feel we are in a critical moment for regulatory/taxation/incentives. Global warming is still at several major tipping points. Technology development and industrial switchover cost/momentum/economies of scale improvement curves for BEVs, solar/wind, and grid storage are all improving at geometric rates. Synthetic fuel for aviation and ultra-long-range ground/sea transport desperately need incentives. We need policy that will give PHEVs with 50 mile all-electric range a multi-thousand dollar advantage over non-hybrids. This is important because it educates the general populace on electric drivetrains, transitions to BEV charging/grid utilization profiles, maximizes the battery production to the 90% use case, and gets 90% of consumer driving to emissions-free electric. We need a gas tax that starts to accumulate every year over a ten year period. As in it goes up 50 cents a year. Used cars should be subjected to initial registration taxes that increase $200-$500 a year. Triple that for ICE SUVs/CUVs based on vehicle weight and EPA mileage numbers. With this should come a large incentive for PHEV ($5000-$1000) that will gradually phase out over 10-20 years. We need the home solar and battery storage incentive doubled down on, not currently phased out. While utility solar is cheaper, it comes with grid costs that I don't think are necessarily included, and home solar will reduce grid complexity and durability, and incentivizes movement to a home green energy closed cycle.
- sushid 6y ago
  Doesn’t this only work when it’s done on a global scale? Otherwise I feel like it would just crater non-Chinese businesses. You’re already fighting an uphill battle when it comes to labor costs. How can your steel mill stay competitive when one country taxes negative externalities while another doesn’t?
  - leoedin 6y ago
    You're probably right. We already don't recognise the other environmental negative externalities of imports. It would probably require some level of tariffs. Something we've seen with solar power recently is that its become cost competitive on its own, without subsidies, in certain situations. Effectively the marginal cost of electricity from solar is almost zero, so it can outcompete any fossil fuel which has per-joule extraction costs. If we could give our green technology industry enough of a cash injection now, it's feasible that we could completely remove that subsidy later when green technologies (particularly energy storage ones) are mature enough.
AtlasBarfed 6y ago
Don't take this quote outtake as indicative of what the article is talking about, the articl talks about actual usable hydrocarbon production instead of this: "However, efficiency is still low and, as a gas, hydrogen is difficult to store." There's a lot of FCEV/"Hydrogen economy" stories floating through the channel in the last few months it seems, which to me speaks of some PR push to offset battery day. Hydrogen stories drive me a bit nuts because they handwave away the fundamental problems with hydrogen production, delivery, refueling, and storage as something that research will solve. Here we have a research project deep into solar fuel production and it drops that comment in. Strikes me as an unbiased / uninflated indictment of the other stories. Synthetic fuels are only carbon neutral even at the thinnest depth of analysis, but they'll probably be the only way to get aviation to at least carbon neutrality in a decade.

16 points by clouddrover 6y ago

The last part of the article hit on an interesting point, and one I think needs to be more widely recognised. As long as fossil fuels are cheap, innovation won't happen quickly in this area. If fossil fuels were taxed to their true cost, the "prize" for green technologies would be so great it would encourage huge investment, and likely rapid progress. https://concretecuts.xyz/articles/market-driven-green-technology/ https://concretecuts.xyz/articles/market-driven-green-techno...

AtlasBarfed 6y ago
I agree. I just feel we are in a critical moment for regulatory/taxation/incentives. Global warming is still at several major tipping points. Technology development and industrial switchover cost/momentum/economies of scale improvement curves for BEVs, solar/wind, and grid storage are all improving at geometric rates. Synthetic fuel for aviation and ultra-long-range ground/sea transport desperately need incentives. We need policy that will give PHEVs with 50 mile all-electric range a multi-thousand dollar advantage over non-hybrids. This is important because it educates the general populace on electric drivetrains, transitions to BEV charging/grid utilization profiles, maximizes the battery production to the 90% use case, and gets 90% of consumer driving to emissions-free electric. We need a gas tax that starts to accumulate every year over a ten year period. As in it goes up 50 cents a year. Used cars should be subjected to initial registration taxes that increase $200-$500 a year. Triple that for ICE SUVs/CUVs based on vehicle weight and EPA mileage numbers. With this should come a large incentive for PHEV ($5000-$1000) that will gradually phase out over 10-20 years. We need the home solar and battery storage incentive doubled down on, not currently phased out. While utility solar is cheaper, it comes with grid costs that I don't think are necessarily included, and home solar will reduce grid complexity and durability, and incentivizes movement to a home green energy closed cycle.
sushid 6y ago
Doesn’t this only work when it’s done on a global scale? Otherwise I feel like it would just crater non-Chinese businesses. You’re already fighting an uphill battle when it comes to labor costs. How can your steel mill stay competitive when one country taxes negative externalities while another doesn’t?
- leoedin 6y ago
  You're probably right. We already don't recognise the other environmental negative externalities of imports. It would probably require some level of tariffs. Something we've seen with solar power recently is that its become cost competitive on its own, without subsidies, in certain situations. Effectively the marginal cost of electricity from solar is almost zero, so it can outcompete any fossil fuel which has per-joule extraction costs. If we could give our green technology industry enough of a cash injection now, it's feasible that we could completely remove that subsidy later when green technologies (particularly energy storage ones) are mature enough.

AtlasBarfed 6y ago

Don't take this quote outtake as indicative of what the article is talking about, the articl talks about actual usable hydrocarbon production instead of this: "However, efficiency is still low and, as a gas, hydrogen is difficult to store." There's a lot of FCEV/"Hydrogen economy" stories floating through the channel in the last few months it seems, which to me speaks of some PR push to offset battery day. Hydrogen stories drive me a bit nuts because they handwave away the fundamental problems with hydrogen production, delivery, refueling, and storage as something that research will solve. Here we have a research project deep into solar fuel production and it drops that comment in. Strikes me as an unbiased / uninflated indictment of the other stories. Synthetic fuels are only carbon neutral even at the thinnest depth of analysis, but they'll probably be the only way to get aviation to at least carbon neutrality in a decade.