Quote:
Originally Posted by Nouvellecosse
That's not a technological limitation though. It's mainly that the process hasn't gained the necessary efficiencies and cost advantages afforded by economies of scale though mass production. Although it's also partly that fossil fuels are inherently cheap from the fact that it's pre-made energy that already exists and it just waiting to be pumped/dug up and burned. So yes that's going to be cheaper/easier than creating our own by growing, harvesting, and processing the bio-matter ourselves. So yes, it would require us to make a decision to invest the effort to choose to do it rather than to simply do whatever is the cheapest and easiest.
I don't even feel like commenting on the stale, worn out maxim of "if it was a good idea we'd already be doing it" since that doesn't really even warrant discussion. I mean, almost no advancement would ever occur if we all fell for that mindset. Almost every new innovation or idea would immediately be written off since it wasn't already happening. But if I must, in this case the reason it isn't already happening is because using pre-formed fossil fuel energy is cheaper when not counting the serious externalized costs/downsides we're currently discussing, and it's hard to factor these downsides into the economics of it since the people making the economic decisions are disconnected to various degrees from the downsides. In other words, the benefits of cheap are immediate and direct, whereas the benefits of avoiding the negatives is indirect and over time. Therefore a lot of people seek to keep enjoying the benefits of "cheap" by denying that the downsides exist, that the downsides are important, or that the downsides can be avoided.
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This might sound like nitpicking on my part, but saying that "the technology exists, it just needs to be made more efficient" is effectively the same as me saying that the technology does not currently exist for biofuels etc to compete with fossil fuels.
What I said about us not currently using biofuels because the technology is not there is absolutely true. Biofuels would actually be very easy to integrate into our existing infrastructure, so if someone out there could produce gasoline and profitably sell it at 90c/l at the pump instead of a dollar, there's nothing stopping them. And if not here where gas is cheap, do it in Europe where gas is twice the price. Some probably blame big oil for holding back the technology, but those companies are not all idiots. It would only take one oil company to realize they can make money and they get ahead of the market. But none have done that, for... reasons? They don't like making money?
And I want to be clear I'm not saying this because I don't think biofuels can't be a part of the solution, but they will not be so long as it is cheaper to just use oil. That's why we need carbon pricing.