Not really. The author proposes that hydrocarbons are in fact a reasonable transport / storage mechanism. That's the bulk of the meat here. > "Terraform Indust

Not really. The author proposes that hydrocarbons are in fact a reasonable transport / storage mechanism. That's the bulk of the meat here. > "Terraform Industries’ synthetic natural gas process is not particularly complicated or difficult to achieve. We intended to make it easy to scale and deploy. If Europe had enough solar power deployed, even at current European solar prices, we could synthesize desperately needed natural gas at lower cost than transoceanic liquefied natural gas (LNG) importation, which is the next best option." Also, low solar costs are in fact a reason to just build out where demand is, rather than do a lot of transporting. Actually, that's covered in the article. In the first few paragraphs. > "On the chart above, the US south west receives around 5.2 kWh/kWp, while notoriously dreary England receives only 3.2 kWh/kWp. Does this mean that Britain should import solar power from north Africa? Not quite. > "At 30% cost reduction and three years per doubling of production rate, Britain’s cost will match Los Angeles’ in less than six years. There are a few parts of the world, particularly at extreme northern latitudes, where solar power is truly painful, but they are few and their population is low, compared to the billions who live in generally sunny-enough locations. When their local cost of solar falls to the point where synthetic atmospheric CO2-derived hydrocarbons are cheaper than importing it from (probably) the Middle East, demand will increase substantially. "