alt Hacker NewsIf it's almost free, then even electrically cracking molecules to make hydrocarbons and ammonia compounds is cost-competitive if you can quickly start and stop production, which would be really interesting. Those processes don't have to be very energy efficient if the capital and operating costs are relatively low. That last sentence does a lot of work though.
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This is my dream.
I think we should solve the "It's cloudy sometimes" problem with state built, extreme oversupply. Also giant solar farms in the southwest and large HVDC power lines to send that everywhere.
There's zero reason why "We make more power than we use most of the time" ever has to be a "problem". I think we should have so much unused power that it makes sense to suck CO2 out of the air to make fuel and chemical feedstocks. Air capture at that scale would be an insane engineering and manufacturing problem though.
You probably shouldn't vote for me though. I have dumber ideas too. But the "Lets do Solarpunk for real" one is probably not harmful to anyone. Except for a bunch of rich families in Texas.
https://terraformindustries.com/
Terraform is working on that - burstable synthetic methane generation using cheap catalysts that you can afford to idle, only generating methane when electricity is cheap.