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Originally Posted by t vago
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As others have pointed out,
those aren't petroleum. They're biofuels and/or synthetic fuels, no different in principle than biodiesel or corn-based ethanol.
Further, there's an efficiency/conservation of energy thing that you have to consider. Suppose you can capture sunlight to create biofuels from CO2 and water (hey, plants have been doing it for a billion years or so, so it's not impossible - where do you think petroleum came from in the first place?). When you do get it working,
you will not be able to capture more energy than is in the incident sunlight. In fact, you are going to capture less, because any process is less than 100% efficient. Now plants have had that billion years to perfect such processes, and they're about 5% efficient:
Photosynthetic efficiency - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Good commercial PV panels are currently about 20%, and improving.
So your alternative is to capture solar energy at 5% efficiency, and use it in engines that are
at best about 33% efficient (but usually much less), and you're claiming this is better than PV capturing sunlight at 20% efficiency, and using it in an EV at about 80% efficiency?
Why, yes, I do. Such as some actual
evidence, not just a few articles repeating claims without any substantiation. How about a list of 14,000 abandoned wind turbines, with locations? And not including antique Aermotors :-)
PS: On the tax credit story, looks like that's just another case of typical industry poor-mouthing about how they can't possibly survive without existing subsidies, or meet new emissions regulations, or whatever. But somehow they always manage to...