Carbon Sciences company wants to create a bio-fuel from natural gas, methane and CO2. Not really sure if I dig the idea but I’ll give them equal time on my site since people should hear all sides. Their insistence that electric cars can’t work because of infrastructure is flawed since every home, pole and wire has electricity already so that’s Strike One.
Here is their case for their technology:
With a potentially leaking and dangerous high-profile carbon capture storage project in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan making international headlines and undermining the safety and integrity of carbon capture and storage (CCS) as a realistic solution, researchers at the University of Saskatchewan (UOS) say CO2 shouldn’t be treated as waste – rather a commodity.
UOS researchers have licensed a technology to Santa Barbara, CA USA-based Carbon Sciences to transform dangerous CO2 and methane into gasoline and other transportation fuels.
“The world is not facing an energy crisis, it is facing a fuel crisis,” said Byron Elton, Canadian-native and CEO of Carbon Sciences. “We are not running out of electricity, we are running out of cheap, easy crude oil. The utilization of domestic natural gas and greenhouse gases to make transportation fuels will benefit the environment and the economy, create well-paying jobs and achieve the energy independence that we have longed for and talked about for too long.”
Byron Elton, CEO of Carbon Sciences wrote a story about this prospect saying:
As a recent UC Davis study indicates, the global oil supply is set to run dry 90 years before replacements, such as renewable energy, are ready. Such measurements are helpful in driving development and establishing market-ready deadlines, but perhaps their largest contribution is the conversation they spark about how to address this problem.
The biggest obstacle to replacing petroleum is that alternative technologies not only have severe limitations, but are decades away from being affordable without substantial government subsidies and require expensive infrastructure changes. While waiting for renewables to mature, a technology that bridges our current and future energy consumption habits is needed to wean us from the fossil fuels we consume today.
Consider the good and bad aspects of today’s energy challenges. First, the bad news. Each and every day the United States consumes 20 million barrels of crude oil. We produce 7 million barrels leaving a delta of 13 million barrels of oil that we need to purchase from foreign sources. At current levels of $90 a barrel, that adds up to nearly $1.2B a day that we send outside the country to purchase oil, or $427B a year. That represents 80 percent of our annual trade deficit.
Now for some good news. There are technologies being developed that could produce copious amounts of gasoline and other transportation fuels by using other fossil fuels such as natural gas. The United States has more natural gas than any other country in the world. Known estimated reserves are 4,000 trillion cubic feet. That is the equivalent of 700 billion barrels of crude oil, or three times the current amount in Saudi Arabia.
With the concerns about fracking natural gas and how it leaches into the water table as shown in gasland the movie. Also, if I am going to Drill Baby Drill, I would rather it be for geothermal energy than natural gas any day of the week. I just wanted to show this story since everybody is trying their best to promote their technology without recognizing one thing. Electric cars have zero tailpipe emissions and centralized powerplants where we can control emissions. That’s just the facts; jack!
