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Energy economics and rocket science with Casey Handmer

complexsystemspodcast.com

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Re: Energy economics and rocket science with Casey Handmer

#11

Post by schiffern »

churchill wrote: post #5
aesch wrote: post #4

Casey Handmer's company is creating synthetic hydrocarbons from renewable energy. Here is a good video where he gives a tour of the company and talks about its goals: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NngCHTImH1g . Curious what people think about the idea of synthetic hydrocarbons? It is a seemingly obvious idea that I hadn't heard about until recently, as long as you can use energy efficiently to create the synthetic…

Synthetic hydrocarbons will likely fail, simply because of the same reasons vertical farming failed. Once you're spending money on infrastructure to capture solar energy, losing 80% to inefficiency, before piping into your vertical farm via LEDs (losing another 50% to 80%), a farmer who draws free sunshine will outcompete you because he's using free energy while you're spending millions to power a small factory sized…

Inevitably the solution to the anti-profitability of running (essentially) a gas power plant in reverse is government subsidies. Amazing how otherwise "efficient market" folks can forget market wisdom the moment big change is needed in big industries.

The touted advantage is that instead of market-driven electrification of multiple sectors you only need one big silver bullet technology, however these are futile systems that actually reduce the total amount of energy available to society (vs electrification which does the opposite). And since the pricing signals are messed up by subsidies you can't invest in the economically optimal amount of energy efficiency. This is precisely the opposite of the sort of activity we might want to subsidize.

Handmer has some great writing on space subjects, but on this we're going to disagree.

Re: Energy economics and rocket science with Casey Handmer

#12

Post by d_burfoot »

churchill wrote: post #5
aesch wrote: post #4

Casey Handmer's company is creating synthetic hydrocarbons from renewable energy. Here is a good video where he gives a tour of the company and talks about its goals: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NngCHTImH1g . Curious what people think about the idea of synthetic hydrocarbons? It is a seemingly obvious idea that I hadn't heard about until recently, as long as you can use energy efficiently to create the synthetic…

Synthetic hydrocarbons will likely fail, simply because of the same reasons vertical farming failed. Once you're spending money on infrastructure to capture solar energy, losing 80% to inefficiency, before piping into your vertical farm via LEDs (losing another 50% to 80%), a farmer who draws free sunshine will outcompete you because he's using free energy while you're spending millions to power a small factory sized…

The analogy to vertical farming is a tempting one, but ultimately misleading. There is a crucial difference between TI-produced natural gas and Saudi-produced gas: the former is carbon neutral, the latter isn't.

For every molecule of CH4 TI creates, they're pulling a molecule of C02 out of the atmosphere to do it. When you burn a CH4 molecule from a Saudi well, you're moving carbon from the ground into the atmosphere.

Re: Energy economics and rocket science with Casey Handmer

#13

Post by schiffern »

d_burfoot wrote: post #12
churchill wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Synthetic hydrocarbons will likely fail, simply because of the same reasons vertical farming failed. Once you're spending money on infrastructure to capture solar energy, losing 80% to inefficiency, before piping into your vertical farm via LEDs (losing another 50% to 80%), a farmer who draws free sunshine will outcompete you because he's using free energy while you're spending millions to power a small factory sized…

The analogy to vertical farming is a tempting one, but ultimately misleading. There is a crucial difference between TI-produced natural gas and Saudi-produced gas: the former is carbon neutral, the latter isn't. For every molecule of CH4 TI creates, they're pulling a molecule of C02 out of the atmosphere to do it. When you burn a CH4 molecule from a Saudi well, you're moving carbon from the ground into the atmosphere…

It makes no difference. Saudi Arabia won't stop pumping gas because it's not carbon neutral.

edit Depleting their entire reserves of gas would be stopping because it's unsustainable, not because it's not carbon neutral. Also that sounds like a really bad idea.

Re: Energy economics and rocket science with Casey Handmer

#14

Post by churchill »

d_burfoot wrote: post #12
churchill wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Synthetic hydrocarbons will likely fail, simply because of the same reasons vertical farming failed. Once you're spending money on infrastructure to capture solar energy, losing 80% to inefficiency, before piping into your vertical farm via LEDs (losing another 50% to 80%), a farmer who draws free sunshine will outcompete you because he's using free energy while you're spending millions to power a small factory sized…

The analogy to vertical farming is a tempting one, but ultimately misleading. There is a crucial difference between TI-produced natural gas and Saudi-produced gas: the former is carbon neutral, the latter isn't. For every molecule of CH4 TI creates, they're pulling a molecule of C02 out of the atmosphere to do it. When you burn a CH4 molecule from a Saudi well, you're moving carbon from the ground into the atmosphere…

Will you pay 10x for synthetic fuel? And if you do, for moral reasons, you will be driven out of the market by those burning cheaper fuel. Just like the cultured meat startups have learned, established players won't let you take away their subsidies and drive them out of business.

Big Oil has rivers of money to lobby and make sure carbon-neutral fuel startups can't legislate them out of the market.

Re: Energy economics and rocket science with Casey Handmer

#15

Post by megaman821 »

churchill wrote: post #14
d_burfoot wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The analogy to vertical farming is a tempting one, but ultimately misleading. There is a crucial difference between TI-produced natural gas and Saudi-produced gas: the former is carbon neutral, the latter isn't. For every molecule of CH4 TI creates, they're pulling a molecule of C02 out of the atmosphere to do it. When you burn a CH4 molecule from a Saudi well, you're moving carbon from the ground into the atmosphere…

Will you pay 10x for synthetic fuel? And if you do, for moral reasons, you will be driven out of the market by those burning cheaper fuel. Just like the cultured meat startups have learned, established players won't let you take away their subsidies and drive them out of business. Big Oil has rivers of money to lobby and make sure carbon-neutral fuel startups can't legislate them out of the market.

There is probably a market for 2-4x more expensive carbon-neutral aviation fuel. Most other fuel-consuming vehicles are better off going in a different direction, batteries or hydrogen fuel cells.

Re: Energy economics and rocket science with Casey Handmer

#16

Post by sn9 »

sien wrote: post #10
aesch wrote: post #4

Casey Handmer's company is creating synthetic hydrocarbons from renewable energy. Here is a good video where he gives a tour of the company and talks about its goals: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NngCHTImH1g . Curious what people think about the idea of synthetic hydrocarbons? It is a seemingly obvious idea that I hadn't heard about until recently, as long as you can use energy efficiently to create the synthetic…

There are a few companies doing it. Prometheus Fuels is another, they have been on HN previously : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31264388 They have a cool website : https://prometheusfuels.com/ There are some companies that want to use nuclear power , Valar Atomics is one : https://www.valaratomics.com/ The cost estimates seem to be 4-10 times as expensive as fossil fuels.

> The cost estimates seem to be 4-10 times as expensive as fossil fuels.

Importantly, this cost is expected to decrease precipitously as the cost of solar energy declines exponentially and as the the conversion technology continues to improve through iteration and economies of scale.

Re: Energy economics and rocket science with Casey Handmer

#17

Post by DoctorOetker »

churchill wrote: post #5
aesch wrote: post #4

Casey Handmer's company is creating synthetic hydrocarbons from renewable energy. Here is a good video where he gives a tour of the company and talks about its goals: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NngCHTImH1g . Curious what people think about the idea of synthetic hydrocarbons? It is a seemingly obvious idea that I hadn't heard about until recently, as long as you can use energy efficiently to create the synthetic…

Synthetic hydrocarbons will likely fail, simply because of the same reasons vertical farming failed. Once you're spending money on infrastructure to capture solar energy, losing 80% to inefficiency, before piping into your vertical farm via LEDs (losing another 50% to 80%), a farmer who draws free sunshine will outcompete you because he's using free energy while you're spending millions to power a small factory sized…

You seem very confident in your position, and I am reminded of the confidence of people exclaiming solar power would never take off back when commercially available PV efficiencies were in the single digit percentages. Going from 8% to 24% effectively tripled PV panel output on a per area basis, even though it sounds like just a 16% increase.

Given your confidence, I assume you are aware of efficiency bottlenecks and their associated fundamental thermodynamic limits.

What do you believe is the bottleneck, and what thermodynamic principle limits it?

At renewable farm scale everyone has read about negative pricing etc, so it seems there will always be a niche to profit from.

How can you predict in advance the capex investment cost in advance of future developments?

Pumping up fossil fuel certainly comes with costs (even when excluding moral and future costs), think of employees, securing facilities against attack, etc.

Given Western divestment from Russian fossil fuels, on non-economic grounds, why couldn't we similarly some day divest from fossil fuels?

> It'll cost 10x the price of the gas Qatar & Saudi Arabia pump out of the ground essentially for free.

What a bizarre statement, 10x 0 = 0.

If you want to educate people how you believe electroreduction of CO2 to be a dead end, please give scientific and economic evidence that renewable fuels could never become cheaper than sourcing and or distributing fossil fuels.

Re: Energy economics and rocket science with Casey Handmer

#18

Post by sien »

sn9 wrote: post #16
sien wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a few companies doing it. Prometheus Fuels is another, they have been on HN previously : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31264388 They have a cool website : https://prometheusfuels.com/ There are some companies that want to use nuclear power , Valar Atomics is one : https://www.valaratomics.com/ The cost estimates seem to be 4-10 times as expensive as fossil fuels.

> The cost estimates seem to be 4-10 times as expensive as fossil fuels. Importantly, this cost is expected to decrease precipitously as the cost of solar energy declines exponentially and as the the conversion technology continues to improve through iteration and economies of scale.

That's very true.

Also, over the next century the cost of fossil fuel extraction will increase and the price of synthetic and fossil fuels will get much closer at least.

If there was a tax reduction for carbon neutral fuels they could become cost competitive even more rapidly.

Kerosene for aviation and diesel for ships, trucks and mining are good candidates for synthetic fuels.

Re: Energy economics and rocket science with Casey Handmer

#19

Post by Veserv »

churchill wrote: post #5
aesch wrote: post #4

Casey Handmer's company is creating synthetic hydrocarbons from renewable energy. Here is a good video where he gives a tour of the company and talks about its goals: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NngCHTImH1g . Curious what people think about the idea of synthetic hydrocarbons? It is a seemingly obvious idea that I hadn't heard about until recently, as long as you can use energy efficiently to create the synthetic…

Synthetic hydrocarbons will likely fail, simply because of the same reasons vertical farming failed. Once you're spending money on infrastructure to capture solar energy, losing 80% to inefficiency, before piping into your vertical farm via LEDs (losing another 50% to 80%), a farmer who draws free sunshine will outcompete you because he's using free energy while you're spending millions to power a small factory sized…

Their thesis is probably that solar electricity will soon be (as an example) 1/10th the price of natural gas electricity and that they believe they can get 10-30% storage/conversion efficiency. Therefore, the price of synthetic natural gas will be cheaper than current natural gas.

There are a number of acknowledged assumptions in that model and other potential problems that may make their thesis incorrect, but you have raised none of them so far nor directly refuted the thesis.

Re: Energy economics and rocket science with Casey Handmer

#20

Post by sn9 »

schiffern wrote: post #13
d_burfoot wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The analogy to vertical farming is a tempting one, but ultimately misleading. There is a crucial difference between TI-produced natural gas and Saudi-produced gas: the former is carbon neutral, the latter isn't. For every molecule of CH4 TI creates, they're pulling a molecule of C02 out of the atmosphere to do it. When you burn a CH4 molecule from a Saudi well, you're moving carbon from the ground into the atmosphere…

It makes no difference. Saudi Arabia won't stop pumping gas because it's not carbon neutral. edit Depleting their entire reserves of gas would be stopping because it's unsustainable , not because it's not carbon neutral. Also that sounds like a really bad idea.

Running out of gas in the ground will do that though.
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