Another Blue-Sky Energy Source
Yesterday the New York Times’ Dot Earth blog put up an excited post about a Los Alamos National Laboratory plan to convert CO2 into truly greenhouse-neutral synthetic gasoline and ethanol via “an electrochemical process.” Two hours later the blog had to temper its enthusiasm, having noticed that it would take huge amounts of energy, probably from nuclear power, to make it work.
This sort of thoughtless enthusiasm is way too common. At least no investors lost money this time, or, rather, yet.
I don’t want to insult anyone, but I think the real problem is that people don’t understand the chemistry — not even at a freshman level — that’s involved in thinking about what it would take to turn CO2 into fuel on an industrial scale.
