Converting Carbon Emissions into Liquid Fuels

Natural gas figures prominently in President Obama's second-term energy blueprint, released this morning. He hopes to convert more commercial trucks to the fuel and support "research into the safe and responsible use of natural gas," to the tune of $40 million.

“Once people hear that the economics are very good, maybe we won’t have everybody dash to gas and throw out coal. We hope the rest of the world can learn from our plant.” A technology that holds the hope for cleaner use of coal will be tested on a commercial scale for the first time in Canada next year, aiming to resolve big uncertainties about the vast amount of power it will need.

While China is taking on renewable sources to slash emissions, coal remains a big part of the country’s energy mix accounting for about two thirds, according to International Energy Agency projections.How to make both ends of using coal and reducing carbon footprint meet?Carbon capture store system technology could be the way to do so.As China reinforces its emissions reduction efforts and yet keeps on consuming coal, it is eyeing C.C.S.

HyperSolar, Inc., the developer of a breakthrough technology to make renewable natural gas using solar power, announced yesterday that it has filed a patent application for the production of renewable natural gas using sunlight, water and carbon dioxide. This renewable natural gas is a clean, carbon neutral methane gas that can be used as a direct replacement for traditional natural gas to power the world, without drilling or fracking, while mitigating CO2 emissions.

2011 saw huge advances in solar, wind and other renewable energy sources, and these advancements will continue into 2012. In fact 2012 could be the year that renewable energy sources start to seriously compete with traditional fossil fuels, at least that is the hope in the battle to reduce carbon emissions and our dependence on dwindling oil stocks. However a major problem with renewable energy sources is that they can rarely provide consistent power levels, due to a myriad of factors outside of human control.

Scott Grannis points to this excellent Salon article "