The saviour of the petrol engine?

There have been articles about research into "making petrol for air" for a while - this one seems to show that real progress has been made. Which does show that it is technological change that will change things, as it always has been. 

While it talks about costs, the article didn't talk about net energy produced. That would be an interesting figure. Getting CO2 out of air into the liquid; processing the liquid; creating the required hydrogen to combine with the CO2 to make the hydrocarbons, all sound like pretty energy intensive processes.  

I also flicked through this article - it's pretty long. Very interesting about the 1% v 99% argument, in that it is really about the 0.1%, the 9.9% and the 90% argument. Which is very, very different. 

www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/06/the-birth-of-a-new-american-aristocracy/559130/

I've just read that again and unless they have managed to suspend the laws of thermodynamics, I think what I meant to say was "net energy consumed and CO2 produced". It might well be CO2 neutral to capture CO2 from the air and make fuel which you then burn, but there must be CO2 production in the energy required for the process. A bit like a BEV is actually 80+ gm/km at the "tailpipe" base on how we currently generate our power.