Ben,
It doesn't matter how many times you reuse the CO2 before putting it
into the atmosphere. If it goes into the atmosphere, you no longer have
zero net gain. How do you see reusing the CO2 improving the picture?
And second, as I said, I'd rather use solar or wind to directly generate
electricity, not to generate synfuels. The electricity doesn't need to
be used by an EV; it only needs to displace electricity generated from
fossil fuels. So, I wouldn't choose any of your options. I'd simply
choose putting more electricity on the grid or directly to users. Why
waste some of the energy to produce fuel when we already have a direct
demand to replace electricity generated from fossil fuels?
Peri
------ Original Message ------
From: "Ben Goren" <b...@trumpetpower.com>
To: "Peri Hartman" <pe...@kotatko.com>; "Electric Vehicle Discussion
List" <ev@lists.evdl.org>
Sent: 21-Dec-14 11:44:49 AM
Subject: Re: [EVDL] PNAS report cites study that EV's pollute more than
gascars.
On Dec 21, 2014, at 12:23 PM, Peri Hartman via EV <ev@lists.evdl.org>
wrote:
For example, using CO2 from power plant emissions in fracking doesn't
help unless fracking has to use CO2 and the only other way would be to
produce CO2 specifically for fracking.
That's why I didn't use fracking as an example. And, best I know, most
commercial CO2 already comes from power plant emissions, so that's the
CO2 that's already being used in the mining industry.
Second, CO2 can't be converted into fuel (liquid or not) without
using energy.
That's why I explicitly used the example of energy input from solar and
wind to turn the CO2 into liquid fuels.
Anecdotally, regarding converting CO2 to diesel or other liquid fuel,
it seems that would be less efficient than simply generating
electricity to offset some other use of carbon based fuel for
generating electricity.
Yes...but only if you've already got the electric vehicle and
associated infrastructure.
Which of these options would you prefer?
* A long-haul diesel truck powered by Saudi Arabian crude oil that
costs $4 / gallon to refuel.
* A long-haul diesel truck powered by oil refined from syngas made with
solar electricity from CO2 emissions captured from an existing
coal-fired power plant that costs $10 / gallon to refuel.
* A short-haul electric truck that costs twice as much as the diesel
variants and has a fraction of the range and load capacity that costs
the equivalent of $0.50 / gallon to recharge.
Now, there are certainly use cases today where the electric version
wins...but only a small minority. And, equally certainly, no business
today is going to go for the syngas-to-diesel version, save as part of
a research project.
However, we're not that far away from a time when the Saudi diesel is
going to cost $8 / gallon and the syngas diesel $7 / gallon, at which
point every business is going to prefer the syngas as a no-brainer.
And that time is going to come before some trucks on the road today
reach their useful end of life, as well as before we've got batteries
that are at a price / performance parity with the diesel tank.
During that transition period, doing double duty with that CO2 is going
to make a lot of sense, _and_ it's much environmentally superior to
what we're doing today.
Cheers,
b&
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