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xkcd #2948: Electric vs Gas (xkcd.com)

submitted 4 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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An idling gas engine may be annoyingly loud, but that's the price you pay for having WAY less torque available at a standstill.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Renewable fuels exist and are used today, but the efficiency and pollution aspects still apply.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago (1 children)

If you're making your diesel from CO2 pulled from the air, pollution aspects don't really apply (at least, CO2 emission issues don't, there's still NOx, but that's what cat piss is for).

Problem is, converting atmospheric CO2 back into fuel makes the efficiency issue drastically worse. Maybe with enough solar panels and windmills, and use the Fischer–Tropsch process with the excess energy that the grid isn't consuming.

Of course, that would be for mobile fuel, if solar plants were going to do anything like that for later use generating electricity during peaks, making diesel is dumb; you'd want to use hydrogen or ammonia for in-place energy storage.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago (1 children)

I was thinking about fuels like HVO. They work well, but have their own ecological implications.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago

Ah. I'm generally skeptical of any plant-based 'green fuel' because they generally take up agricultural capacity that would otherwise be producing food