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Eventually synthetic fuel will become economically viable.

• Schroedingersat 4y ago
  Eventually is right now. Hydrogen and ammonia electrolyzers are being built by the tens of megawatts as we speak. Presently for chemical synthesis, but use in fuel cells or turbines is not far behind. Simple synthetic hydrocarbons follow soon after that.
  • alexvoda 4y ago
    Hydrogen is still cheaper to get from methane. And synthetic hydrocarbons are still expensive. But we are moving towards economic viability. The desired point to get to is to have fossil fuel extraction unprofitable, economically nonviable. At that point even the most ardent deniers of climate change will have to give up fossil fuels or face bankruptcy.
    • Schroedingersat 4y ago
      Once you include the risk profile any government which is actually governing (I know this is getting rarer) will want a fair bit of synthetic production capacity to reduce the impact of price shocks. The costs of ammonia and urea shortages to a country are much higher than the sticker price when trucking and agriculture depend on them. This strategic capacity investment is sufficient to set off economies of scale which will see the baseline prices start to look less appealing -- even with the current state of massively subsidized fossil fuels. The hard part is getting neoliberal governments to do the thing that is actually the only economically sane option when they've all got massive conflicts of interest.