Excerpt from the article:
Millions of combustion engines – powering machines, vehicles and aircraft – will remain in use for decades to come. Instead of replacing them, a Swiss chemical engineer is developing a greener alternative: a synthetic, “drop‑in” fuel that works with existing engines and infrastructure.
Inside her labyrinthine lab at the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology (Empa) in Dübendorf, a network of pipes and custom-built modules hums away as Alessia Cesarini shows off the prototype e-fuel unit she took two years building.
She aims to turn it into a business offering a viable alternative to conventional fossil fuels.
“There are lots of systems with combustion engines still running, and the idea is to provide a locally produced and less-polluting solution,” she explains.
Transport accounts for 47% of Switzerland’s energy-related CO2 emissions, versus 25% globally. A Swiss study estimates that around two million combustion-driven vehicles will remain on the country’s roads by 2040. Globally, Bloomberg estimates that 55% of cars will still run on combustion engines by that time. Also, for hard‑to‑abate sectors such as aviation, long‑term decarbonisation will depend heavily on the adoption of renewable fuels.
Cesarini’s approach is simple: “The goal is a solution that works with existing vehicles and infrastructure – sustainable both environmentally and economically,” she says.
My impression is that it is usually a very different group of people saying carbon capture is an impractical solution to the people saying wind turbines or solar are a pipedream
My impression has generally been that folks with expertise have felt like carbon capture is an impractical moneysink, vs climate change deniers trying to say the solutions presented could never work
But perhaps I am wrong and there is a meaningful body of experts who thinks carbon capture is an important and viable tool, and/or have been a meaningful body of experts who thought wind power or solar would never have promise. I’m not the most knowledgeable on this subject
Today, yes. In the 90s, not really. Solar and wind have benefited massively from government subsidies to develop out of the prototype stage and into proven effective technologies.
I’m not saying carbon capture is definitely effective, I’m saying there hasn’t been enough investment in the field yet to determine if it is or isn’t.
Without some means of effective carbon capture, this synthetic fuel project has no environmental benefit.