Can a Canadian Company Put an End to the Era of Oil?

Ticker

Monika Bauerlein,
CEO

Dear Reader,

The next few months are make-or-break for Mother Jones’ fundraising, and we need more online readers to pitch in than have been of late. In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we take a level-headed look at the brutal economics of journalism, why investigative reporting like you get from us matters, and why we're optimistic we can grow our base of support in a big way—starting with hitting a huge $300,000 goal in just three weeks. Please learn more and donate if you can right now.

The next few months are make-or-break for Mother Jones’ fundraising. We need to raise $300,000 quickly, and we need more online readers to pitch in than have been. Please learn more in "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," where we go into the brutal economics of journalism, and what makes Mother Jones unique and worth supporting if you can right now.

Carbon Engineering

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

Over at the Atlantic, Robinson Meyer describes a new process for creating fuel that releases no net CO₂:

First, outside air is sucked into the factory’s “contactors” and exposed to an alkaline liquid….Second, the now-watery liquid (containing carbon dioxide) is brought into the factory, where it undergoes a series of chemical reactions to separate the base from the acid….Finally, the carbon dioxide is combined with hydrogen and converted into liquid fuels, including gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel.

….What does that mean? Consider an example: If you were to burn Carbon Engineering’s gas in your car, you would release carbon-dioxide pollution out of your tailpipe and into Earth’s atmosphere. But as this carbon dioxide came from the air in the first place, these emissions would not introduce any new CO2 to the atmosphere. Nor would any new oil have to be mined to power your car.

“Nor would any new oil have to be mined to power your car.” That sounds a bit like burying the lead, doesn’t it? Anyway, this new process sounds great, but the article skips a wee little step. Where does all the hydrogen come from?

Electrolysis of some kind, I suppose, or some other method of splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen. But that takes a lot of energy. That’s why we don’t have cheap, plentiful synthetic gasoline already. But then again, there’s this from last year:

University of Houston physicists have discovered a catalyst that can split water into hydrogen and oxygen, composed of easily available, low-cost materials and operating far more efficiently than previous catalysts.

….The catalyst, composed of ferrous metaphosphate grown on a conductive nickel foam platform, is far more efficient than previous catalysts, as well as less expensive to produce. “Cost-wise, it is much lower and performance-wise, much better,” said Zhifeng Ren, M.D. Anderson professor of physics and lead author on the paper. The catalyst also is durable, operating more than 20 hours and 10,000 cycles in testing.

There’s a lot of research going into more energy-efficient ways of splitting hydrogen out of water, and hydrogen is relatively easy to store. As usual, the key to all this is how well it scales and how much it really costs once you put everything together. But even if this is one of those things that’s still five or ten years away, it’s promising news anyway.