Purpose
- Investigates the effect of the global financial system and/or the monetary system in fostering a sustainable economy.
- Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
- Explores and develops market-based solutions.
Summary
Current decarbonization plans envision fully electrifying all current uses of fossil fuels. This project will examine the total cost of such plans, including the cost borne by the end users of energy, and describe the less-expensive and disruptive alternative of replacing fossil fuels with nuclear-generated synthetic hydrocarbons. The production of these carbon-neutral fuels from seawater, non-food agriculture, and air capture will be analyzed.
Description
Beyond Electrification Project Reports
Report #1 – June 2026
As a continuation of earlier work, I presented a webinar to the Eco-Nuclear Solutions Group (ENS) on the results of my New England study, Filling the Gap in New England’s Decarbonization Plans: A New View of the Electric Grid. We had a useful discussion which led to clarification of a number of issues. ENS has circulated the report widely, especially in Massachusetts, to legislators and other interested parties.
I also published, with Matthew Wald’s assistance, an Opinion piece based on my New England study in the Portland Press Herald (and related newspapers throughout Maine). It received nearly 100 reader responses, and I’ve submitted a follow-up piece on the most-asked question entitled “But What About the Waste?”
I have begun the Beyond Electrification project by examining why full electrification is not a realistic, achievable goal. It turns out that, while its cost is likely to be exceedingly large and difficult to predict, the structural impediments to this goal are most serious. I will describe them in more detail in the project’s final report, but these are principally the reliance on all of the end users of energy, especially in heating and transportation, who will have to cooperate in purchasing and installing such a conversion from liquid and gaseous fossil fuels to electrically-driven devices. Such a transition is not one that can be managed by the energy industry alone. Energy consumers would have to agree to transform aspects of their modes of living and traveling without any expectation of improvements in their quality of life or lower costs.
Report #2 - July 2026
During this period, I examined the simplest zero-carbon fuel beyond hydrogen, the use of ammonia (NH3) to power long-distance shipping. Currently, ammonia is produced using natural gas (methane) to split hydrogen from water (yielding carbon dioxide!) and the Haber-Bosch process to combine the hydrogen from nitrogen from the air to form ammonia. Ammonia can be created with nuclear energy replacing methane as the source of heat and electricity. Several techniques have been developed to increase the efficiency of the hydrogen-extraction process so that zero-carbon ammonia can replace petroleum as a carbon-free fuel for shipping at a cost that would be only modestly greater than the current average price of marine fuel.
I then reviewed the available technoeconomic studies of the production of synthetic jet fuel from seawater. The first was published in 2011 at MIT, the next was an extended series from the Naval Research Laboratory between 2012 and 2018, and the third was a study from MIT published in 2019. Each concluded that jet fuel could be produced at a cost that would be no more than twice what it costs today (but there are obviously opportunities for reducing costs, especially by redesigning the nuclear heat and electricity source using the Gigafactory approach to drastically reduce the cost of that portion of the process).
There are also alternative chemical pathways to achieve the conversion of seaborne carbon and hydrogen into a hydrocarbon. NRL uses an electrolytic cation exchange method, but a group at MIT points out that there is an existing method which is membrane-free and will require less energy. The MIT group itself has proposed an approach which, they claim, should be substantially less costly.
Structurally, this method of producing carbon-neutral synthetic hydrocarbon fuels is the most direct and straightforward way to create such fuels. Once the oil and gas industry and/or the federal government has to decided to do it, they need to (1) organize a research program to decide upon the most efficient thermochemical path to convert C+H into hydrocarbons, then (2) create the infrastructure, including nuclear facilities, for producing the fuel, and (3) transport it via pipelines or truck carriers.
The biofuel approach to creating synfuel is much more complex societally, requiring a reorientation of agriculture, the creation of biomass intermediate- conversion facilities, and the creation (or adaptation) of large biorefineries. In the long run, though, this may be the most practical way to create carbon-neutral synthetic fuels on a large scale. It will be the next technology I examine.
Purpose
Energy use rests at the core of the modern technological society. We need to produce and consume it in a way that is affordable and sustainable if the economy as we know it is to survive. This project examines central issues that must be addressed if the economy and current society is to thrive in the face of fossil fuel-induced climate change.
Scope
This project is international in scope. The technologies to be examined can and must be applied everywhere.
Amount Approved$45,000.00
on 5/20/2025
