The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
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Thiel: Even at $1/kg hydrogen, synthetic methane feedstock costs $10/MMBtu
“In the best case, you need something like half a kilo of hydrogen per kilo of methane. And so if we looked into a, to a wonderful version of the future where we, Get to the kind of magic one dollar per kilogram hydrogen mark that, you know, is, is on the DOE's…”
Thiel: Synthetic fuels require $1/kg hydrogen and $100-$200/ton CO₂ to compete
“For a fuel, if you want to get anywhere close to economically competitive, you know, subsidies decide, you have to have hydrogen that's going to be on the order of a dollar per kilogram, and you have to have CO₂ that's in that 100 to 200 dollar per ton range, …”
Thiel: $100/ton DAC CO2 adds $6/MMBtu to synthetic methane costs
“The, again, sort of best case from the chemistry is something like 2.75 kilograms of CO₂ per kilogram of methane. So thinking back on a, on an MMBTU basis, you know, if you want to Get the good sort of CO₂ from the air, and we hit all our hopes and targets of …”
Thiel: Single-pass CO2 conversion does not significantly move green methanol economics
“If you get A better conversion of CO two and hydrogen to methanol on a single pass. It just really doesn't move the overall economics in a huge way because, again, back to a previous point, CO two and hydrogen are the big cost drivers in that system.”
Thiel: Natural gas is by far today's largest source of energy storage
“The largest source by far of energy storage that we have today is in the form of gas storage.”
Thiel: Standard synthetic methanation achieves approximately 50% total efficiency
“If you used something like that and did this kind of fairly standard methanation process, the total efficiency of the process kind of comes in around 50% ballpark, right? And about half of those losses of the 50% of the energy that you lose are in the electrol…”
Thiel: Facility installation costs regularly reach 2 to 4x core component costs
“And, you know, thinking about sort of a chemical or a fuel synthesis type process, the core equipment, you know, might only, or the total installed cost of a facility might be two, three, four, even more times the cost of the core componentry itself.”