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0 pointsschiffern7mo ago0 comments

  >and that’s the best you can do

Even if the e-Gas production process is 100% efficient (and it very much is not), you're still throwing away 40-70% of the energy depending on the type of engine. This compares very poorly to a battery drivetrain which achieves 90+% round-trip efficiency.

For cars and trucks at least, scaling battery manufacturing is simply a much easier challenge vs more-than-tripling the required size of the entire fleet's renewable energy supply.

E-Gas can't compete on land, even assuming e-Gas converters were free and 100% efficient. This isn't a matter of waiting for the tech to get better and become The Sustainable Future, it's already been made obsoleted by electric cars.

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schmidtleonard7mo ago

"E-gas cars vs electric cars" is settled, "e-gas planes vs electric planes" is very much not. You were careful to say "on land," but I wanted to highlight it for anyone who isn't familiar enough with the argument to spot the hedging. Energy storage density is extremely important for aviation and the best batteries still make for very poor planes.

Emergency generation is another application where density is important. It's extremely difficult to beat the a gas turbine + tanker truck on cost and flexibility, it's the energy equivalent of "don't underestimate the bandwidth of tapes in a station wagon."

schiffernOP7mo ago

  >You were careful to say "on land," but I wanted to highlight it for anyone who isn't familiar enough with the argument to spot the hedging.

I didn't know saying what I meant is such a heinous crime. :) But to make things fun here's a nice strong claim:

E-Gas won't work for airplanes either.

That's because A) E-Gas converters are not free and not 100% efficient, so it's more like 5x the cost in best-case-scenario (vs 10x today), and B) the aviation industry is well aware that corruption is simply cheaper.

E-Gas will not happen. What will actually happen is more of the same:

1) aviation will continue to use E-Gas (and some costly demo flights) as a greenwashing tactic while behind-the-scenes working to soften climate goals,

2) eventually the intermediate technical-economic-policy compromise will be to only use fossil fuels for aviation, and

3) in the long-long term aviation will go electric too, only with slightly different routing and network design to accommodate the reduced range (this has a cost, but by then fossil fuels will be costlier).

E-Gas is good for nothing except greenwashing fossil fuel assets, hence the big push on HN. Gotta fool your talent pool that they're not 'really' part of the problem. This both lowers labor cost and delays effective regulation, since engineers tend to be thought-leaders in crafting future policy.

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