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It's even worse, synthetic fuels (synthetic hydrocarbons, if using CO2) require a hydrogen input. So you need to factor in the energy needed to get that hydroge

• adrian_b 3y ago
  Synthetic fuels are not an alternative to solar panels or wind turbines. Synthetic fuels are the best method for long-term storage of the energy produced by solar panels or wind turbines and they will also always remain the best form of energy storage for the applications where the mass and volume are important, i.e. aircraft and spacecraft (as long as those do not use nuclear reactors). The hydrogen for synthetic hydrocarbons will come from water, exactly like the hydrogen from all fossil fuels or from all living matter (even the hydrogen from volcanic gases or hydrothermal vents, which is used by bacteria, comes from water that has been reduced abiotically, mostly by the iron from magmatic rocks). Unlike any other form of energy storage, the use of hydrocarbons for the long-term storage of the captured solar energy has already been demonstrated successfully for billions of years. We can already have a better efficiency than the plants at the initial step of the capture of the solar energy. We must also attain an equal or better efficiency at carbon dioxide capture and at its conversion into hydrocarbons.