The “Carbon Neutral” Fuel You Probably Won’t be Able to Buy

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Internal combustion engines aren’t going away. They are merely in the process of being taken away – from you and I and most everyone else who won’t be able to afford paying $20-plus for a gallon of fuel.

That is the projected cost, give or take, of a gallon of “carbon neutral” gasoline, also styled “e-fuel.” It will enable the very rich who can afford to buy it to continue driving their non-electric cars while make-pretending that they “care” for the “environment.”

In fact, of course, what they care about is being able to continue driving something that isn’t tethered to a cord.

That’s for the rest of us.

But what is “carbon neutral” fuel? It is fuel that, when burned, causes no more “carbon” to be “emitted” than was first removed from the air. This entails a very complex – very expensive – process of sequestering, condensing and converting air (the constituent chemical elements) into liquid fuel. It takes a tremendous amount of electricity to power this process – and for it to be “carbon neutral,” it must all be sourced “cleanly,” as from windmills and solar arrays.

As if carbon dioxide were “dirty.”

As if it caused pollution or fouled the environment. It does neither – in the least. But it takes a lot of energy to make “clean” fuels. According to a Reuters news story, quoting the Nature Climate Journal, “Using e-fuel in a gasoline or diesel car requires about five times more renewable electricity than running a battery-electric vehicle.”

It is similar in concept to the artificial making of oil by condensing raw materials, applying heat and pressure.

The result is oil that cost more energy to make than you get.

But what does the cost of “carbon neutral” fuel matter to the few who can already afford to spend six figures-plus on a car?

The makers of six-figure cars – such as Porsche, Lamborghini and Ferrari – think it won’t matter much. Or rather, it won’t matter more than not being able to drive a Porsche, Lamborghini or Ferrari.

At least, one that isn’t tethered.

It’s more than just that, too.

A flat-six-powered Porsche or a V12 Ferrari doesn’t sound like a battery-powered device. This is what makes it more appealing than yet another battery-powered device.

This is a big part of the reason for the $75 million that Porsche is investing in the production of “carbon neutral” gas. Porsche builds battery-powered devices, too. The government requires it, effectively. But many – possibly a majority – of Porsche buyers do not want to drive a battery powered device. And they have the means to buy what they want. The same is so for people who buy other very high-end luxury and performance cars.

Bit it’s also more than just that.

When – God help us – EVs are everywhere, it will be common to drive an EV. Those who can still afford to drive a real car, with an engine, will acquire status as well as privilege in the much the same way that 120 or so years ago, being able to afford a car (any car) elevated one above the walking and pedaling and horse-draw-cart-riding masses.

“When you are on a road and you see too many times in a day the same kind of car, our eyes get used to it  . . . you do not perceive any more desirability,” notes Ferrari CEO Benedetto Vigna.

When – in the near future – you rarely see (or hear) a car with an engine, the lucky few who can still afford to indulge will find it very desirable. For it will have become something exceptional – something most people will only be able to see and hear. Like a private jet zooming past overhead, carrying the exceptional people to their exceptional places.

Which is precisely why “There’s no road map for industrialization at the scale that would be needed for e-fuels to replace fossil fuels,” as Bentley CEO Adrian Hallmark said the other day.

Italics added.

Of course not.

“Scale” – the replacement of $3 per-gallon gasoline with “carbon neutral” fuel at a comparable cost – is not what is wanted. It is the opposite of what they – shorthand for the psychopaths-in-office who are doing the bidding of the global finance psychopaths who bought them to do it – want.

Which – as they now say openly – is to get the bulk of us out of cars, period.

“Electrification” being a misdirection, of a piece with the “masks” that were used to direct people into accepting the necessity of “vaccines” that were in fact gene-altering drugs very few of them would have agreed to take if they’d been told beforehand that they were in fact gene-altering drugs that might change them in ways not agreeable while also not preventing them from getting sick or getting others sick.

$20-per-gallon “carbon neutral” or “e-fuel” is elite fuel.

It is an exemption – if you can afford it – from the immiseration being imposed on those who cannot, which amounts to probably more than nine out of ten of us.

Of a piece with the way they exempt themselves from the degradations and immiserations imposed on us when we travel by air commercially. It is not-well-known (but no-less-true for being so) fact that when they travel by private plane, they do not have to spread their legs and raise their arms – or give up their opened bottle of water before boarding. All of the Homeland Security Theater that plays out at the terminal you and I use doesn’t exist at the private terminals used by them.

Because “terrorists” can’t afford to charter a private airplane, you see.

Just as the “carbon footprint” of their aviation fuel-guzzling private jets doesn’t matter, either – while the fractions-as-much of the same “emitted” by us in the process of burning gas is warrant enough to take away our cars and make us hitch a ride.

Or walk.

E-fuels are not meant to “extend the life of IC vehicles,” as the trade publication Automotive News recently put it. They are meant to “extend the life”of a very attenuated few of them – for a very few. Those who can afford a new six figure Porsche or Ferrari – and can afford to spend $400 on a fill-up – will be able to continue driving real cars. 

The rest of us will – if we are lucky – get a battery-powered device. Or we’ll walk, pedal or hitch a ride. Maybe along the way, we’ll get to see and hear what we used to be able to drive.

. . .

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55 COMMENTS

  1. As far as chemistry goes, it is virtually impossible to create, or destroy, elements. Nuclear fusion, aka the sun, can fuse hydrogen into helium. And particle acceleration has created neptunium, I believe. But as far as conventional combustion, internal or external, we cannot emit any more carbon that originally exists in whatever compound we burn, be it coal, oil, wood, or ‘soylent green’. Why are we to believe that combustion of conventional auto fuels releases more carbon than it contains, when that if not possible according to physics? This is just another case of government word-salad used to confuse and control the ignorant masses.

    Why are we to believe the Global Warming/Climate change bullshit that claims we will incinerate or suffocate ourselves by increasing the release of CO2? The current atmospheric content is slightly over 400 ppm. The jungles and vegetation of pre-Ice Age Earth took 800 ppm just to be sustainable. We cannot ‘release’ any more CO2 into the atmosphere that pre-Ice Age Earth, certainly not by any measure of current human activity. Even if that were possible, the global effect would be the return of pre-IceAge atmospheric concentrations of CO2, which apparently did not burn Earth to a cinder then, either.

    Scientific facts are, and will continue to be, misrepresented and used to frighten, alarm, and control stupid people. And currently that appears to include the majority population of this country as well, educated or not.

  2. “But what is “carbon neutral” fuel? It is fuel that, when burned, causes no more “carbon” to be “emitted” than was first removed from the air”
    You mean like firewood? Every gram of carbon released from burning wood was stored in that wood from its environment for the life of the tree.
    So one would assume that instead of electrifying everything, maybe we should be working on wood fired devices?

  3. Aside from the production and distribution of electricity, gasoline & diesel transport has been the greatest single contribution to worldwide economic development and improvement of human quality of life in all of human history. The steam engine era lasted roughly 100 years, making such things as unifying entire continents, among others, possible. However, the individual transport, diesel & gasoline, is the very means by which all nations have developed & prospered to be what they are today. Steam power alone would never have brought humanity to the level of prosperity that currently exists in virtually ever nation in existence, regardless of it’s current level. Petrol is utilized in every conceivable aspect of modern life, in nearly every location humanity exists. The notion that elimination of the use of petrol, especially for transport purposes, would NOT put the entire world back into the ‘dark ages’ again is sheer ignorance and fantasy.

  4. WEF admits they want cars reduced by 75% by 2050, because of climate change, their lie to reduce us to walking while they jet set around above us.

    The real problem, the way I see it, is the average person will not hold the politician accountable for what they do to us. For instance, this gay demon Ziolensky has destroyed Ukraine with this war, 500,000 Ukes are dead, and not one Uke, who has less than 48 hours to live at the front line, had the courage to take out this pyscho madman.

    What is crazy is how everyone follows orders and like sheep and march off to their deaths. Remember fragging in Vietnam? You have a gungho Lieutenant who wants to fight the gooks next day in the jungle, which means certain death for you, so while that West Point fool sleeps, you roll a live hand grenade into his tent.

    Likewise, we all march off to the Covid death jab clinic, or we pay taxes, or we do whatever the regime insanity tell us, but none of us has the courage to take them out. After all, they are just people, with names and addresses. They bleed and die like the rest of us.

    The enemy of the Amerikan people is clearly the illegit regime in D.C. They are the enemy, and they should be treated as such. Starting with not voting for any of them. Lindsey Graham got booed for 6 straight minutes at some South Caroline Trump rally last week. But no one had the courage to stop booing and put that little pipsqueak down – especially because he is instrumental in starting WW3 with Russia which could end our nation.

    What is it going to take until we revolt? Or are we going to let them squish us out of existence?

    • Sad to say, Jack, you are right. Who the hell cares if Americans are the most well-armed bunch of people in the world? They will sit on their asses while the WEF takes our gas powered vehicles away, along with the rest of our freedoms, while we are invaded via the southern border. In general, the population suffers from a severe case of “it can’t happen here”. And when it does, they are not going to be prepared to do anything except try to blame everyone else for their own blindness that lead to their destruction.

    • If one person would step forward and put that ass diddler out, it would be the shot heard round the world part deux

  5. Now it’s e-fuel, recently Covid/masks, climate change, ad infinitum.
    All presupposing the legitimate authority for control over
    We The People.

    To solve problems it is necessary to address the root
    of the harms, not the symptoms.

    “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed
    the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety)
    by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins,
    all of them imaginary.” – H.L. Mencken

    http://www.strike-the-root.com/

  6. Or it’s just relabeled Dino juice at 10x the price.

    They’ll plant a few trees to make the paperwork come out right.

    Suckers!

  7. I will reiterate my promise to make carbon-neutral gasoline and diesel from biomass, at $2/gallon in today’s dollars, if I can ever get to the point of initiation. Should I reach that point, however, I can guarantee there will be plenty of internal combustion engines thirsty for the precious juice, as long as no “clunkers” type campaign or outright abolition has gobbled them up.

  8. This is really stupid. FFS,,, Where do they think the ‘Carbon’ (using their dumbshit terminology) that is in the oil from the earth came from! And they call our species intelligent. Surely they jest!

  9. e-fuel, e-schmuel, talk about fuels in this world, the WEF is full of them.

    Canola, corn and soybeans are growing in the fields again this summer. Vegetable oils can be used as fuel. Peanut oil from peanuts is the original diesel fuel.

    A 2000 pound canola crop will be 50 percent oil content. 1000 pounds of canola oil will be 1000/6.2=161 gallons of canola oil per acre. 161,000 gallons of canola oil for every 1000 acres harvested, 3840 barrels of canola oil.

    Sunflower oil seed contains about 30 percent oil content.

    21,000,000 acres planted to canola then will be approximately 80,645,000 barrels of oil.

    80 percent of the daily consumption of hydrocarbons in 21 million acres of canola crop.

    US canola production is 2.2 million acres, 1/10th of Canada’s production.

    Illinois and Iowa grow soybeans and corn.

    There has to be ample supplies of diesel and gasoline to plant crops with machinery.

    Not much gets done by hand when you are planting a couple of hundred million acres of crop.

    Hydrocarbons to the rescue.

    No mechanized agriculture, you’ll be hunting and gathering to survive.

    • Yes, Drumphish, and I intend to produce some experimental sunflower oil for use in my tractor and diesel generator, as soon as I procure one.

      • BaDnOn,

        Hexane is used in commercial operation of sunflower oil production.

        Hexane dissolves the raw sunflower oil after crushing, then separated chemically.

        It’s a distillation process like cracking crude oil.

        Applied for a job at a crushing plant, was not interested after the interview that revealed the use of hexane and other chemicals to have a product meant for human consumption.

        Buy cold-pressed sunflower oil.

        With canola oil, there are varnishes after burning.

    • Hi Mike,

      The Epoch Times is reporting that there are more new unsold EVs just sitting in dealerships compared to last year. If this continues, will the Biden Thing issue a diktat that ALL Americans who own a gas vehicle get rid of it and buy an EV regardless of whether they can even afford one or have legitimate questions about EVs? Given that he tried to FORCE millions of Americans who have a job to be guinea pigs for Pharma 2 years ago, I wouldn’t put it past him to try to FORCE Americans to buy an EV no matter what.

  10. After all’s said and done, sooner rather than later, Occam’s Razor’s going to catch up with all this dystopian §#¡± show they’re trying to construct. It has happened before. It will happen again. Laws of nature will always create equilibrium. The only downside is that we will pay a huge price for letting this folly get prolonged for too long.

    • Correct- they absolutely won’t win and their time is running out, but they are going to make a hell of a mess for the good guys to clean up.

  11. What is so stunning is when in history has a ruling elite HATED the people they rule over (the U.S. and Western Europe) and actively sought their replacement? Say what you will about Xi and Putin, at least they seem to care about the Chinese and Russian peoples.

    The fact our elites hate us is monstrous. And it only ends one of two ways: It is either us or them.

    As for this fuel, it’s wasteful and pointless. It does cost more energy to produce than it generates. Like Fischer–Tropsch, which the Nazis used to turn coal into gasoline. It cost more energy to produce the fuel than the work generated by the fuel.

    • Now, with pyrolisys, you can turn trash plastic into fuel. But just in Europe, Asia and rural America. The one thing US elites don’t want is for the average US citizen to have $1 gallon gas.

  12. Looks like the New York Times has an article out claiming that “Daily climate disasters are our new normal”. To even read the article, you have to have a subscription to NYT, but I imagine that whoever wrote that garbage says the way to “Saaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaave the planet” is implementing a carbon tax, give government and these globalist technocrats MORE MONEY & POWER, drive an EV, eat bugs and fake meat, and live in an itty bitty apartment in an urban $#!+ hole.

    • ‘Near some heat sources, the ground beneath Chicagoans’ feet has warmed by 27 degrees Fahrenheit over the past seven decades. This has caused the earthen layers to expand or contract by as much as half an inch under some buildings.

      ‘Just beyond the walls at each of these spots, out of sight and out of mind, this heat is silently doing what heat does: spread.’ — New York Slimes

      https://archive.ph/TF1JP#selection-1137.0-1137.127

      ‘Expand or contract’ — if there’s not even a consistent direction, then causation is not established.

      ‘Heat silently spreading’ has been going on since the birth of the freaking universe. This ‘deadly invisible heat’ meme is straight outta Report From Iron Mountain — an implacable, amorphous menace that can’t be fixed, unless we print $30 quadrillion dollars.

      The craziness has gone dual-turbo: zero to flake-out in 3.7 seconds flat. Got lithium?

      • Hi Jim, the narrative really has become hyperbolic. Regular everyday weather has morphed into “climate”, and all of it is a “crisis”. We still haven’t hit 90 degrees yet here in Boston and it’s mid July already. Gives my electric bill a break not having to run the a/c much, and just goes to show that weather is local, “average” temperatures don’t mean squat.

        • Ditto in Michigan. Highest temp “I” measured was 89 degrees several days ago. Not unusual for SE Michigan. Was cold before that, my garden has finally started to grow, also some dry times, again not unusual. I expect our high temps to be in late August. I coach HS Cross Country so we try to get the kids ready for high temp racing which happens in August and September. Temps in the range of 80-95 not unusual.

    • Meanwhile, on the Crazy Coast, the L.A. Slimes is blatantly lying about the near term weather forecast. An article in today’s edition states:
      >High temperatures throughout the region are expected to reach as high as 112 degrees between Tuesday and Saturday.
      >This upcoming heat wave is certainly going to be more intense and could be a long duration event, which could continue through the weekend and maybe into next week. We don’t see any end to the heat wave in the next seven days at least

      Well, no.
      Where I live,
      ZIP Code 92992, we have had a very cool spring, with temperatures averaging about ten degrees Fahrenheit below average. Agricultural crops, such as tomatoes, are ripening much later than usual. Finally, we are approaching nearly average temperatures for this time of year.

      Weather Underground, which is usually quite accurate, forecasts the following:
      Today, 11 July
      Forecast Average Record
      High 94 °F 95 °F 106 °F
      Low 67 °F 61 °F 50 °F

      And for the next 10 days:

      12 July 95
      13 July 95
      14 July 98
      15 July 99
      16 July 100
      17 July 98
      18 July 95
      19 July 94
      20 July 94

      This might be a “heat wave” in parts of Alaska, but is just about average for this location at this time of year.

      And of course, the Slimes is pushing the “climate change” hysteria. Surprise, surprise.

      Can you say Lügenpresse?

  13. @Eric — Before I forget, I bought a 2016 Jetta 2.0L turbo from a family member in Tennessee over the weekend and managed 38 MPG driving 70-ish on cruise control most of the way down from Nashville to Austin. Two tanks of gas. Who needs a hybrid?

    The number might have pushed above 40, but, for some reason, Sunday afternoon traffic was a disaster in Little Rock.

  14. With this obsessive push from these psychopaths to have us “Eating ze bugs”, giving up gas vehicles, blocking the sun, etc., will their INSANE proposals be too much even for those who belieeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeve in the climate change narratives, or will they dutifully comply like so many did with nonsensical diktats from Tony Fauci and other corrupt public health bureaucrats? That remains to be seen.

  15. This week’s Econtalk podcast is worth a listen. Russ asks Mark Andreessen for his thoughts on AI and what it holds for the future. At one point Russ asks about the usefulness of learning skills like learning how to drive a car with a manual transmission. Andreessen points out that at one time horses were an indicator of lower status while the car was a rich man’s toy. But today the horse’s role has reversed, with rich people (his neighbors) the only ones who can afford them. Indeed Jennifer Gates (who has the unfortunate burden of Bill’s resemblance) is an expert equestrian. The conclusion is that handmade products transend their original use and become works of art.

    Engineered fuels might follow the same path. “Artisian” gasoline could be the next microbrew or distillery business. Rich folks will have fuel cellars in tanks under the garage. Each having the ideal octane and blend of additives for whatever vintage automobiles the owner needs. Maybe it will be traded and auctioned, like fine art, to park wealth and launder money. but will there really be much difference? You can get just as drunk on two buck Chuck as you can on the 2006 Masseto Toscana (on sale for $1900), but what fun would that be? Much like the audiophile’s crazy expensive “interconnect” speaker cables, it will all be in the eye of the beholder.

    • Microbrews, wineries, and distilleries are popular hobby businesses with the well off, but production of guzzzzoline, particularly the modern high tech product, is a very complex process involving an army of highly paid people to build, staff, and maintain the sophisticated production facility that is a modern refinery. Most of the jobs are not tasks which the elites would willingly work even if they had the mechanical and/or technical aptitude — many don’t in my experience.

      Biodiesel production is not much different than making artisan soap in a barn/basement — another popular pastime with idle elites — but they mandated all of the diesels off the road.

      The end of the middle class will be the end of gasoline and many other products requiring a sophisticated infrastructure. I don’t believe e-fuel will be an exception.

      • Roscoe wrote “a very complex process involving an army of highly paid people to build, staff, and maintain the sophisticated production facility”

        Ah but that’s at a scale that takes price and volume into account. When price doesn’t matter the wood fired still out by the creek is just fine even though it’s terribly inefficient. Now add in all the finely tuned controls and sensors available for almost nothing from Chinese suppliers, stainless steel tanks and piping available off the shelf, and suddenly what was once unimaginable becomes possible. Remember that oil refining was once a small batch process but scaled up to serve billions of users. It can scale back down again. Especially if your end goal is to sell a premium high margin product to a very select few.

    • From wine snobs to gasoline snobs. What a concept!
      Prescient you are.

      Then again, I am a “reverse” or anti, wine snob, and enquire as to the octane number, not the so-called “vintage.”

  16. “Using e-fuel in a gasoline or diesel car requires about five times more renewable electricity than running a battery-electric vehicle.” — Nature Cliiiiimate Journal

    What’s alluded to — but not explicitly named here — is EROEI: Energy Return on Energy Invested.

    Liquid fuels (gasoline, diesel, Jet A, et al) contain many times more energy than was needed to pump the crude oil and refine it into products. This embedded leverage fed the rapid flowering of industrial civilization.

    Whereas producing e-fuel yields less energy than went into making it. And that’s not even considering the disastrous inefficiency of running an eeeee-fool plant only when the sun is shining or the wind is blowing.

    Ever read science fiction about depopulated, post-industrial hellscapes? Obviously Klaus Schwab has, because that’s what he’s implicitly advocating.

    One is not surprised that Klaus S. earned a Masters degree in Public Administration from Hahhhhhvid [the root of all elitist evil] in 1967, when post-nuclear novels as well as Report From Iron Mountain were ubiquitous.

    Now it’s Darkness Visible for his victims, as the climate (or more precisely, its self-appointed protectors) seeks to push us back into mud huts. Will we still have TeeVee to deliver the essential, mind-numbing Prolefeed?

    • They don’t plan on us needing it. We will either be genetically engineered to enjoy living however we are told, or replaced by robots.
      After reading this morning that all his staff think Biden is an asshole, I had a thought. Dangerous, I know. That perhaps they are aware of how utterly evil they are. Which is why Biden is an asshole, and why so many gravitate toward Satan. They know if there is a judgement day, they will not be judged well. The thing they forget is Satan may judge them well, but they go to hell anyway. That they are in fact living in their own self designed hell now, and are trying to manipulate their way out of it.
      Or, they are simply psychopaths.

    • >Klaus S. earned a Masters degree in Public Administration
      Jesus, oh Jesus.
      No wonder he is such a dunderheaded a-hole.
      A graduate degree in “how to be a useless parasite.”

      Where I live (Corona, CA) we are afflicted with one such, only she has a *doctorate* in being a public nuisance from University of La Verne, with a B.A. in “Sociology” from Pitzer college. No technical competence whatsoever, in marked contrast to our very excellent Director of Development, Joanne Coletta, who earned a degree in Urban Planning at Cal Poly, knows her job, and does it very well.

      A red diaper baby, Anne Turner grew up the daughter of a left wing professor in Berzerkeley (I repeat myself), and brags about all the commies she knew as a child. Not a good fit locally, as we generally prefer our Congress Criminals to be Rethuglicans. As Director of Community Services, she continually attempts to “exceed her remit” (as the British say) and poke her nose into places it does not belong. Yet, City Council members slobber all over themselves calling her “Doctor.” Wann wird man je verstehen?

  17. What is perhaps most striking is the stupidity of our “betters” that are pushing this agenda. They seem to not realize that they sit atop a pyramid of humanity. They seem to want to depopulate the planet by, what, 70-90%?

    If they get their wish the pyramid will collapse. They will no longer have the millions and billions of people upon which to stand. They will have to dig the cobalt with THEIR bare hands if they want an EV. They will have to plow the fields, milk the cows and carry water themselves to stay alive.

    This portends to be the greatest Greek Tragedy of all time. How can anyone be so blind?

    • The idea is that there’s a scientifically determinable correct global population, and 9 billion ain’t it. But as we’ve seen with the Chinese one child policy reducing population has a massive downside in that there’s no generational wealth creation to maintain the economic gains made by having excess births.

      But that’s where robots enter the scene. Make the robots good enough to run everything and the humans can sit around thinking. Nice idea but not practical. Without a critical mass of humans the odds of outlier genius babys drops. This may explain some of the issues in the black community, if a woman has the means to get to an abortion clinic she might just terminate the next George Washington Carver, Martin Luther King or Louis Farrakhan. Heck it might explain the decline of US intellect in the general population.

      “Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.”

      ― George Carlin

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