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In reply to the discussion: The U.S. Navy Just Announced The End Of Big Oil And No One Noticed [View all]jeff47
(26,549 posts)We can create lots of "carbon free"* power, as long as the energy producer and energy consumer never move.
Once they start moving, we have a major energy transport problem.
What about batteries? Battery technology simply sucks. Even the latest theories on how to improve lithium-ion batteries still don't come anywhere close to the energy density of a carbon-based fuel. And if you look at peak density over the last few decades, it's been climbing quite slowly.
Yes, the Navy wants this so it's nuclear-powered aircraft carriers can make their own jet fuel. But this benefits everyone else in that all of our mobile systems (cars, planes, laptops, cell phones, etc) could operate on fuel cells using carbon-based fuels that were produced using energy from "carbon free" sources.
*quotes around "carbon free" because while the electricity production doesn't release CO2, the production of the generation systems does.