A California-based company has achieved a significant milestone that could transform the way the world powers everything from artificial intelligence data centres to cargo ships.

This breakthrough means the company can now produce clean fuels that cost less than traditional fossil fuels.

Prometheus (the company responsible) demonstrated its technology’s potential by powering artificial intelligence entirely with fuel made from air and renewable electricity. This marks the first time in history that AI has been powered by liquid fuel created entirely from atmospheric carbon dioxide and solar electricity.

I continue to be amazed by advances in energy technology that persist in taking theory and stream lining processes until they become financially viable.

Well, if it scales up it sounds promising, but so far it has only raised something like $50 Million from what I can see, a large slice of it from BMW and is only a pilot plant. It has a long way to go.

It would solve a lot of problems if it works. You could stop electrification immediately and have a carbon neutral hydrocarbon-fuelled economy. That means the huge amounts of materials that need to be mined to try to electrify everything can stay in the ground, and our current manufacturing and logistics systems won't need to be discarded or significantly modified.

Also two-thirds of emissions are from processes that resist electrification like steel, cement, plastics, fertilisers, explosives, pharmaceuticals, lubricants, road surfaces...

You could also use nuclear to run the process, which again would do away with the problems renewables bring into the system.

Here's an idea. Instead of ploughing billions of subsidies into renewables that have made negligible changes to CO2 in the atmosphere, why not throw a fraction of that into hydrocarbons from air and water and see if there isn't a technological fix that works at a reasonable cost. That is the Bill Gates and Bjorn Lomborg approach. In fact I'm surprised Gates hasn't put some money into this technology if it is that good. (He has put money into a similar company called Infinium and his Breakthrough Energy Ventures is also active in the space).

Prometheus has been making these exact same claims since at least 2022 and, from memory, as far back as 2017.

From what we've seen so far, its the fuel of the future.... and always will be.

errr, seems to me that there might be a catch 22 in
this somewhere.
Like if we pull so much co2 out of the air might we
starve for the lack of bread etc ?
With low levels of co2 would we have "Global Freezing ?"
Perhaps not if the fuel when burnt put the co2 back into the air.
Is the energy in greater than the energy out ?