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I’m suspicious of articles that try to dazzle with numbers and end up promising vaporware. If they ever do get carbon capture working and scale up natural gas p
by natch 3y ago
I’m suspicious of articles that try to dazzle with numbers and end up promising vaporware. If they ever do get carbon capture working and scale up natural gas production (“hydrogen” in the title was just a head fake) the they still have to contend with the issue that ICE engines are just way less efficient than electric motors. If you have electrical power, which is part of their elaborate chain of stuff in their picture, just use it directly. We already have the cars and the batteries and the home batteries and the homes that can use it. Just scale that part up. Don’t double down on things that are less efficient and more dangerous.
- XorNot 3y agoBatteries are still expensive, and wear out. We are realistically not going to replace ICE engines in substantially less time then 20 years, probably closer to 50 or 100 even given penetration. What we can do is replace the origin of their fuel source, and the cheaper the better. You can synthesize methane into any liquid fuel you like. Now you'll lose energy in the transformation, but if the input energy is cheap and abundant enough - and can be stored well enough - then maybe that doesn't actually matter. There are large areas of the planet which get more then enough sun to provide all our power needs and would impact no one if we harvested there. But we can't get the energy out of them, and we can't store enough of it to cover the times we can't.