There is with cellulosic technology rather than using food for fuel. Sadly, the low fossil fuel prices of the last few years have hurt renewable fuel development.
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Maybe, but fighting back against economies of scale is a Sisyphean task.
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The problem is not “We need to do this so we can make this as cheaply as possible to maximize our revenue”.
The problem is “We need to do this so the species survives.”
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For most of the world, putting food on the table tomorrow trumps worrying about the world they’re leaving their grandkids. The bizarre thing is how many of the wealthy feel the same way about getting even more wealthy.
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Sometimes they do, as an alternative to gas turbines. Wartsila manufactures engines for such plants. I’ve seen their factory in Trieste, Italy, and the size of the engines is quite impressive (single engine can be rated up to 40 000 hp).
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It’s not economies of scale, it’s regulatory regime shopping that makes it cheaper to pollute.
In many (most?) cases, producers and sellers of foreign goods could not ship product ten thousand miles and still undercut local production costs if they were held to local environmental, occupational safety and employment laws.
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Here’s what I don’t understand. Why aren’t we using fuel cells? From what I understand, they are not made from rare earth elements like modern batteries, last much longer on a “charge” than batteries, and emit nothing of consequence, either in the use of or manufacturing of. Unless I’m missing something, seems like a no-brainer to switch to fuel cells for everything. People always talk about the range of an electric vehicle as a limiting factor. If a fuel cell can last a month on a tank of methanol, then ??? Why the fuck aren’t we using them? If I had a reliable car that I didn’t need to refuel for a month, I’d ditch all my combustion engines in a heartbeat.
Nobody looks at a stream full of oil residue running next to their home that prevents them from being able to raise their own food and thinks, “This is an okay thing, and I’m glad the unregulated factory I have to work at because no other options are available to me is allowed to do this.” The “people just have to make the choice to be good to the planet!” is peak narrow-world view neoliberalism that ignores corporations causing massive amounts of pollution in foreign countries.
Show me one of those! All the bio fuels we currently produce, Even at low levels, are carbon positive. As are Most of the not ready for prime time ones that are a long time off. If only because they take energy input to produce from a grid/infrastructure thats still mostly tied to fossil fuels.
So aside from keeping costs down there’s still an environmental reason to reduce consumption. These things are usually only carbon neutral in a perfect world/market. A down the line thing.
Now if you had a carbon negative fuel there might be a reason to abandon efficiency.
There’s no reason one way or another to abandon development of more efficient engines. We only went so long without major pushes on that front because the fuels were so cheap an awful lot of people and companies didn’t really care. But fuels aren’t that cheap anymore, bio fuels aren’t likely to get that cheap again.
Things that might happen eventually, whether batteries that can hold as much or more energy in a smaller, lighter package than burnable fuels or fuels that are environmentally neutral aren’t a feasible reason just just stop improving engines that burn things.
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Thanks to newer battery tech, trucking is now electrifiable, and Tesla’s already got orders for them. Construction and agricultural equipment tend to benefit from weight, so large battery packs are a plus (my electric garden tractor weighs in around 900 lbs) and they also like the bias towards torque over speed. Ships, well, electricity would be better (but isn’t cheaper) than petroleum fuels for big ships, but not for little boats, and for airplanes electricity is not really commercially viable, with no prospects on the horizon.
In my own personal life, I’d like to get rid of my 2-stroke chainsaws and use all electric ones. But you just can’t get the power to weight ratio… chainsaws, airplanes, and small marine engines are applications where high pollution engines have no viable replacement - yet.
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They are only useful for a few specific applications, despite all the hype. Houses, very large metro busses, a few other things. Not cars.
None of that is entirely true, but it’s also not entirely false. Fuel cells are expensive to produce and are fragile (not necessarily in the way you might be thinking, but in the sense that they can be easily ruined by elemental contamination). They work by converting hydrogen and oxygen into water, so the amount of “charge” is dependent on the size of your tanks and how you are using them (hydrogen can be stored three four different ways with hugely varying pluses and minuses to each). Free hydrogen does not occur in nature - you have to make it - so the process of making it entails energy use and concomitant pollution.
Fuel cells are very interesting. But newer generations of lithium battery are better for cars and similar mobile platforms.
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Fuel cells have efficiencies similar to large piston engines, so while emissions and fuel efficiency would both improve, the results would not be so dramatic. Having said that, when using fuel generated in photosyntetic cells, fuel cell powered cars would be much more practical and better for the environment than electric cars.
There’s a lot of recent research into photosyntetic cells and catalysts that capture CO2 from atmosphere:
https://today.uic.edu/breakthrough-solar-cell-captures-co2-and-sunlight-produces-burnable-fuel
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if we can stop sourcing it from fossil’s, why not?
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We can definitely try as hard as we can (to reduce carbon emissions : slow/stop GW), but we need to be realistic that absent collective human behavior making significant changes that would probably require globally organized benevolent dictatorships, GW is GOING to happen.
We’re definitely headed toward dictatorships, but the odds of ANY of them being benevolent is nil.
Don’t have to source your hydrogen from fossils.
Hhhhhmmmmmm.
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Global warming is already happening.
Trust me I live coastal.
The point here is limiting how far and how fast it goes in the short term. And in the very long term, Maybe territory, reversing it.
Even with “benevolent” dictatorships that sort of thing doesn’t happen quickly. We’re talking about something that’s mostly about infrastructural and technological change. You can’t rely on human behavior. Because in large part will still cut each other to dance around in the guts given a decent excuse. Humans aren’t rational animals. They’re rationalizing animals.
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Fuel cells are expensive, fragile, and often have short lifetimes. They’re just not practical yet. Also, they frequently require expensive materials like platinum to construct. Worst of all, they tend to require ultra-pure fuel or they’ll foul, which makes it far more difficult to distribute than traditional gasoline/diesel/kerosene.
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Actually, people do something like that all the time. A great example is Africans given mosquito bed nets use them instead to strip every living thing out of the lake nearby instead of protecting themselves from malarial mosquitoes. Double short sightedness favoring day to day survival.
Re fuel cells: there’s an interesting Wiki article on the “methanol economy” and how methanol is a far better fuel than ethanol in the variety of ways that can be produced and consumed, fuel cells being one of them.
I am open to suggestions of how to gain hydrogen without using energy produced through some other means. I do not know of any.
People have made hydrogen successfully with solar, but in the end it’s just not as efficient as using modern batteries. So while it’s a neat technology, it only has niche uses, far fewer than either batteries or gasoline.
