I have no idea if technology like this will prove to be scalable, economically competitive, or even practical… but it does seem pretty dang cool as a concept
With a side bonus of not sending money to oil rich theocracies like Saudi Arabia and Texas.
It'll be a lot more work to capture and direct all that, but the biosphere spins off plenty of decomposition byproducts.
The consumption of oil has steadily increased over the last three decades, totaling 4.53 billion metric tons in 2023,
How much can we actually capture, how much energy is that, and how great is the conversion challenge to shift most cars to methane, etc?
It appears a little larger than a handwave problem IRL.
I know that food waste generates a heck of a lot of methane in landfills, but I’d love if someone could add some rough napkin math on this!
https://www.energy.gov/eere/bioenergy/2023-billion-ton-repor...
One would like to focus on existing streams before having to increase area used to grow biomass.
methane hydrates;
strip mining ocean floors could keep fossil fuel consumption going at current rates for millennia.
but before that we could get we stuff in the permafrost
all terrible ideas ... so probable.