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Goddess_Peorth t1_j9sjqwy wrote

Reply to comment by veringer in This ‘climate-friendly’ fuel comes with an astronomical cancer risk | Pollution by Underwood4EverHoC

> is this fuel source actually energy-positive?

Plastics are a petroleum product to start with, so it isn't unreasonable to want to convert them to fuel for recycling.

The specious part is calling it "climate-friendly." A lot of the carbon is still sequestered when it is a plastic. Converting it to a fuel releases that carbon when it is burned. So even if it was energy-positive when looking just at the process itself, it is still going to be net worse for the environment than new petroleum production. All it offers is a way for an oil company to output more fuel and make a little more money.

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veringer t1_j9u93so wrote

I get the problem with how it's being labelled and why it's (at best) a gradation between bad and worse. I also know that some significant fraction of people will only be swayed by economic arguments. So, if it's not energy-positive (or even just break-even), it's likely dead in the water.

All that said, if it did work, it might be interesting if we started converting plastic into energy that had to be used to scrub carbon from the atmosphere and sequester it in a way that doesn't tend to produce microplastics. That would require improved tech and a functional regulatory system, but, let's dream for a while.

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