Do Synthetic Fuels Hold Promise in the Energy Picture of Tomorrow?

A reader asks:

Craig, did you see that the Air Force has begun using a synthetic oil that is algal based from Solazyme in a military helicopter? Could this be the beginning of the synthetic oil era?

Personally, I’m unconvinced that biofuels can scale to make a meaningful replacement for oil. What works very well in the laboratory or at a small scale in extremely well controlled conditions falls apart quickly in large, real world applications.

Having said that, I do believe that synthetic fuels generally have a future. 2GreenEnergy client Windfuels, for example, which aspires to produce gas/diesel from off-peak wind energy, water, and carbon dioxide, implements a five-step process whose thermodynamics look quite solid and hold great promise.

All this, of course, competes with electric transportation. The need for liquid fuels disappears to the degree we can improve battery technology and lower its cost. It will be interesting to see where this all will go over the coming decades; it will most certainly be a long time before we have electric replacements for the drive train in large trucks, aircraft, etc.