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Comment by nielsbot | Hacker News Reader

Can we use excess solar energy to create synthetic fuel (hydrogen?) to power jets?

I know almost nothing about this space. I would appreciate a comment on why this is feasible or not...

There are people researching it, I believe Airbus is about to test flying with hydrogen. It's the usual thing though for "green hydrogen", there's not much green hydrogen, there are some testbeds but just like for cars it seems to be mostly extracted from natural gas. You can extract it with any energy source like solar power. There's still the challenge that hydrogen fuel is not very compact, so it's hard to carry enough energy (in a car or plane) for much use, you end up with very very high pressure tanks. I think hydrogen will make sense eventually for trucks, tractors maybe. The question is will the massive investments in improving batteries make hydrogen vehicles obsolete or not.

There are also research programs about making fuel from other sources, like https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016523702...

Answering my own question: Looks like there's something called solar fuel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_fuel

If advances in solar continue, yes. Currently, the IRA provides very lucrative investment and tax credits for green hydrogen projects (solar and wind powered electrolyzers). Power producers like AES are already building multi-billion dollar projects, and there are a lot more in the pipeline. One day the tax credits may not be needed for this to be economically feasible.

Companies like terraform industries are doing something similar, but creating natural gas. With enough cheap solar, all hydrocarbons are pretty much on the table as well.

It'll be a decade or more until this is scaled up and not dependent on subsidies.

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