Fuel from Air

Peak oil presents a liquid fuels problem.  Transportation depends heavily on oil and nothing is in place to take on the demand.  Every once in a while, a new technology hits the news.  Air Fuel Synthesis is a company with a process that reacts hydrogen with carbon dioxide to produce gasoline.

Now, it's probably helpful to have a process to produce fuel that doesn't depend on crude oil or biomass.  And it's nice to extract some carbon dioxide from the air.  But electrolyzing hydrogen from water involves a net energy loss.  The plan calls for renewable energy to do that, but we're better off using that power more directly.  They hope to produce a ton per day in two years and don't mention any energy return on energy invested.

There seems to be a never ending quest for a silver bullet to solve intractable problems.

Update (April 3, 2013):  Research at the University of Georgia is using a modified microorganism to directly produce biofuel from atmospheric carbon dioxide.

Update (April 8, 2014):  The U.S. Naval Research Laboratory has demonstrated using carbon dioxide and hydrogen from seawater to produce hydrocarbon fuel.

Update (August 1, 2016):  A study published in Science describes using a catalyst to convert carbon dioxide into carbon monoxide which is easier to further convert into hydrocarbon fuels.

Seeds of Destruction

Chrystia Freeland argues that as people start to accumulate wealth, they seek to protect their own position and transform an inclusive society of economic mobility into an extractive one where elites try to get as much as they can out of the rest of society.  She reiterates a point made by Stiglitz that growing inequality has led to lower mobility.  The super rich are confusing their own interests with the common good.