Dateline: September 20 2028
In just five years we have gone from an oversupply of fossil fuels to a critical shortage of the one fuel we need for everything — diesel.
Diesel has been reliably powering trucks, heavy machinery, farming and mining for more than a century. Its high-energy density and ease of transport have made it the fuel of choice for everything from shipping to the military to backup power generation. For versatility and bang for the buck (or joule for the dollar), it’s hard to beat diesel. And diesel is one of the primary products from oil refineries, so it’s abundant too.
Until now. With climate activism at its peak and banks too nervous to invest in fossil fuels, new oil projects are just holes in the ground, and global refinery capacity has slumped. That’s the biggest problem, because even with a glut of crude, only about 20% emerges as diesel after the “crack”, and diesel is the one liquid fuel everybody wants.
Sure, there have been attempts to use green ammonia for farm tractors and hydrogen for semitrucks, but the vast majority of transportation, agriculture, and mine equipment still uses diesel.
And the minerals and construction for solar and wind farms, as well as batteries for electric cars, all need diesel. With limited supply, prices have surged, making technology solutions commercially viable.
First off is a resurgence in gas-to-liquid production. Clean diesel can easily be produced from natural gas, and it’s less polluting than diesel from crude. But the plants are huge to benefit from economies of scale, and can’t be switched on and off to meet demand peaks and troughs. You’re looking at multidecade investments of multibillion-dollar amounts; and then gas is still tarred with a fossil fuel brush.
More exciting are the recent breakthroughs producing complex hydrocarbons from genetically engineered organisms — microbes and bacteria. Basically, you feed them effluent and farm waste, and the mutant bugs excrete diesel and jet fuel. Which cuts down on methane from rotting garbage, so it’s good for the climate too.
As the world moves to electric cars and solar power, we still need fuel for the heavy lifting, and diesel from natural gas and bioreactor plants is so successful it’s being called the “new oil”.
• First published on Mindbullets September 21 2023
Who needs hydrogen?
There’s a new clean alternative to diesel
Dateline: June 10 2025
For heavy-duty trucking, hauling, shipping, and ploughing, diesel has been the stalwart fuel of choice since the development of the diesel engine more than 120 years ago. With high thermal energy efficiency and abundant, convenient liquid fuel, diesel is hard to beat. Whole armies are powered by diesel — including some submarines — and many industries would grind to a halt without it.
But there’s a dark side to diesel: pollution, noxious exhaust gasses and carbon emissions. Though a modern diesel truck produces less smoke in 200km than grilling a burger, there are millions of older engines that are hardly clean. Diesels can run on vegetable oils, and billions of gallons of biodiesel are consumed every year, but that competes with food crops and doesn’t do enough to combat climate change.
Hydrogen has been touted as the ultimate clean fuel, and can be extracted from water using solar power for a net zero solution. But it’s costly and difficult to handle, and relies on vast quantities of surplus “curtailed” power to be viable. Infrastructure to store and transport hydrogen to where it’s needed is complex and underdeveloped.
Now there’s an alternative. Liquid ammonia is easily stored, transported, and distributed, and can be used both in combustion engines as well as feedstock for electric fuel cells. It’s proving itself as a zero-emissions substitute for diesel in tractors, trains, and ships. Recent breakthroughs have reduced emissions on the production side too, and now green ammonia is becoming mainstream.
So, for heavy-duty hauling and shipping, who needs hydrogen?
• First published on Mindbullets June 9 2022
• Despite appearances to the contrary, Futureworld cannot and does not predict the future. The Mindbullets scenarios are fictitious and designed purely to explore possible futures, and challenge and stimulate strategic thinking.
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