Jetfuel from water and air

Sounds too good to be true, doesn't it?  And obviously it is—you'll need energy as well.  I've talked before about the Sabatier Process, which takes CO2 and H2 and under pressure and temperature with a catalyst produces methane.  From methane we can make green jetfuel.

The solution to flight-shaming may hinge on a modern version of a synthetic jet fuel that was honed by Adolf Hitler's Luftwaffe.

German scientists and business leaders are working to create what they hope will be the first viable market for a carbon-neutral version of the kerosene that already powers most modern aircraft.

The science is still based on chemical reactions pioneered in Germany in 1925, but instead of converting coal and other fossil fuels like the oil-starved Nazis did during World War II, green kerosene is derived from water and pulls carbon dioxide out of the air during creation.

The process, which requires huge amounts of electricity generated from renewable resources to ensure carbon neutrality, fractures water into oxygen and hydrogen, which is then combined with carbon.

The project is being overseen by Bremen University, in a consummately German public-private research strategy that previously created the MP3. The German system, which the US is trying to emulate, aims to produce the green fuels required for sectors of the economy such as aviation and heating that rely heavily on petroleum imports.

"Synthetic fuel is the only vision I can see right now to really become CO2-neutral in the conceivable future," Deutsche Lufthansa CEO Carsten Spohr told a conference on sustainable aviation in the German capital in November.

While green kerosene releases carbon when burned, the process is neutral because it recycles greenhouse gas from the air and doesn't require more fossil fuels to be taken from the ground.

The German flag carrier is working with the consortium to supply what it expects will be 5 per cent of its fuel within five years. The non-fossil kerosene is being made at closely held Klesch Group's Heide oil refinery near the North Sea, using renewable energy supplied by wind farms.

Other countries, including Canada and the US, are already deploying Power-to-X technology to capture carbon dioxide and store it underground, but so far only in proof-of-concept ways too small to make a noticeable difference in the battle against climate change.

Carbon Engineering, a Canadian company partly funded by Bill Gates, has been producing "air to fuel" gasoline, diesel and kerosene since 2017, but not in major volumes due to costs, which are still several times more than petroleum-based products. The venture is one of a handful that Canada's government is supporting in the race to curb surging aviation emissions by developing the most economical and environmentally friendly fuel possible.

But it's Germany, where more than half of Europe's 130 Power-to-X testing plants are located, leading the charge. Public calls for action on climate change intensified following last year's record-breaking droughts and heatwaves, withering crops and swelling support for the environmentalist Green Party.

While power generation and farming currently dwarf aviation's contribution to human-caused greenhouse gases (around 2 per cent), skyrocketing emissions from air travel means the industry, which was exempted from the Paris 2015 climate agreement, will become the biggest single polluter if predicted cuts in other sectors materialise, UN data and projections show.

Germany's government is already working on a strategy for scaling up a "green hydrogen" push to produce synthetic fuels at more competitive prices. If Lufthansa gets its way, that effort will include channelling more of the government's aviation tax into the project.

Increasingly onerous regulations, demands from carbon-conscious customers and the spread of flight-shaming are adding to the pressure to develop cleaner fuels faster.

The social-engineering tactic, which started in teenage environmental activist Greta Thunberg's native Sweden, contributed to a 4 per cent decline in that country's [air] passenger numbers last year as more people opted to travel by electric train. Operators of rail networks across northern Europe, already the world's most advanced green economy, have been adding overnight routes to capitalise on the trend.

A study by Brussels-based Transport and Environment found that converting all aviation fuel to non-fossil kerosene with available technology would cost between three and six times more than traditional jet fuel. Even without factoring in rising taxes on air travel, that would lead to an increase in ticket prices of as much as 60 per cent, the research group estimated.  [Over 20 years, that's just 2.4% per annum.  So we could mandate 5% green jetfuel in 2021, 10% in 2022, and so on, so that  by 2040 it would all be green]

But that's not a deal-breaker, according to Ulf Neuling, a chemical scientist at the Hamburg University of Technology. Governments can help offset the added expense through subsidies, tax changes or other incentives and, unlike, biofuels, which turned out to be less environmentally friendly and affordable than once hoped, synthetic jet fuel is scalable, he said.

[Read more here]



Something like 30-40% of global emissions come from cement, iron & steel, air travel, sea transport, agriculture and forest/land clearing.  To get to zero emissions by 2050—or preferably, 2040, given the way the global temperature increase has started to accelerate—we'll need to start reducing the emissions of these sectors now.  If we do it over 20 years, the economic cost will be small.   We have the technologies, but the cost still seems steep—until you work out just how expensive for the world economy another 1 or 2 or 3 degrees C rise in temperature will be.  A shift over the next 20 years will make the annual adjustment bearable and feasible.