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>Putting synthetic gasoline in a gas station is essentially an over-the-air upgrade to any conventional ICE vehicle making it guaranteed zero emissions. Promet

by donny2018 4y ago

>Putting synthetic gasoline in a gas station is essentially an over-the-air upgrade to any conventional ICE vehicle making it guaranteed zero emissions. Prometheus (a startup) promises to deliver exactly on that. I believe something commercially viable should be coming in a year or so. I like this overall idea of synthesizing coal and fuels out of atmospheric carbon instead of just burying it somewhere. This could be the easiest and even ROI-able way to implement carbon capture globally, without causing much technological friction and disruption to economies in developing countries.

fwlr 4y ago
Yes. The case for synthesizing carbon fuels from atmospheric carbon is immensely strong - we need to do carbon capture of some kind, and investing in this method will also retrofit the entire world to zero emissions. Other plans for reaching zero emissions worldwide have multi-trillion-dollar price tags and require political pressure on sovereign nations. With this method you can forcibly zero out a recalcitrant country’s emissions by simply subsidising synthetic coal and fuel so that it’s cheaper than regular coal and crude oil, and they will go to zero emissions while getting an economic boost. Arguably, it’s such a strong case that I’m trying to hitch my pet project of nuclear power to its wagon.
- Schroedingersat 4y ago
  This is a terrible plan. If you want to subsidize another country's power, far better to price dump solar from $13/MWh to $0 than make synthetic coal from $200/MWh nuclear energy at 50% efficiency with an added overhead of $20/MWh for creating it and another $10/MWh to transport it. Merely matching the price of coal will cost you enough that you could just offer to replace all their gas and coal generation for free with no strings. It has the added bonus of only needing to subsidize enough solar to send their fossil fuels into a death spiral of lower load factors and higher costs to compensate. After which supplimenting with wind and storage will be far cheaper for them.

fwlr 4y ago

Yes. The case for synthesizing carbon fuels from atmospheric carbon is immensely strong - we need to do carbon capture of some kind, and investing in this method will also retrofit the entire world to zero emissions. Other plans for reaching zero emissions worldwide have multi-trillion-dollar price tags and require political pressure on sovereign nations. With this method you can forcibly zero out a recalcitrant country’s emissions by simply subsidising synthetic coal and fuel so that it’s cheaper than regular coal and crude oil, and they will go to zero emissions while getting an economic boost. Arguably, it’s such a strong case that I’m trying to hitch my pet project of nuclear power to its wagon.

Schroedingersat 4y ago
This is a terrible plan. If you want to subsidize another country's power, far better to price dump solar from $13/MWh to $0 than make synthetic coal from $200/MWh nuclear energy at 50% efficiency with an added overhead of $20/MWh for creating it and another $10/MWh to transport it. Merely matching the price of coal will cost you enough that you could just offer to replace all their gas and coal generation for free with no strings. It has the added bonus of only needing to subsidize enough solar to send their fossil fuels into a death spiral of lower load factors and higher costs to compensate. After which supplimenting with wind and storage will be far cheaper for them.