Sounds like it should work, why aren’t we further along?
The pushback from the people who have already selected an invalid path, Battery electric cars.
The reality is that battery electric cars do not possess the capability to reduce CO2 emissions much,
but Power to Liquid technology would actually have a solid impact.
Another sticking point is that the oil companies will likely be the ones who implement the technology,
and the green movement has spent the last 40 years demonizing the oil companies.
The irony that the oil companies will be the path to lower emissions, and energy sustainability,
and not Government regulation, is too much.
The reason I say it will be the oil companies, is that they already have the expertise in working with hydrocarbons,
as well as an intact distribution infrastructure, and customer demand.
What was holding things up was the price of oil, Based on the Naval Research Labs work,
it takes about 55 kWh of electricity to create a gallon of gasoline (33kWh).
At a wholesale electricity price of $0.05 per kWh, this would work out to an oil price of ~$96 a barrel.
While oil was below that price, there was no profit incentive to put the technology into production.
Exxon Baytown is converting the first unit currently to make low carbon fuel.
It will only be low CO2 emission, because the source of hydrogen at first will be natural gas.
ExxonMobil planning hydrogen production, carbon capture and storage at Baytown complex