Turning carbon dioxide into liquid fuel. Scientists have discovered a new electrocatalyst that converts carbon dioxide (CO2) and water into ethanol with very high energy efficiency, high selectivity for the desired final product and low cost.

[u/Wagamaga]

https://www.anl.gov/article/turning-carbon-dioxide-into-liquid-fuel

[u/tomdarch]

We are trying to reduce (eliminate) the amount of additional carbon that we are dumping into the planet's atmosphere. If the energy used in this process does not come from burning coal or natural gas, then it's a liquid fuel that is roughly carbon neutral, which is a big advantage over pulling petroleum out of the ground and burning that as fuel.

[u/Whiterabbit-- → u/tomdarch]

yes, but economic feasibility for fossil fuels come from the stored energy in fossil fuels. solar and nuclear takes stored energy from the sun and in the atom. hydroelectric takes the stored energy in the water. for this process you are putting energy in to take less energy out later. so it doesn't give energy which is the goal of fuels. so yes from a carbon perspective its better than burning petroleum since it is carbon neutral, but it has no advantage in terms of providing energy which is why fossil fuels are burned in the first pace. so at best this is a good battery - not an energy solution .

[u/spencerforhire81 → u/Whiterabbit--]

We currently produce more solar power than we can use in California, and we’re installing more capacity every day. Batteries are what we’ve been trying to solve for all along. If we had a good battery for gigawatt scale storage we could generate all our electricity through solar. Only thing been stopping us is that the sun goes down at night, but during the day it provides us with orders of magnitude more energy than we use on the planet.