The most significant and innovative energy solution in decades.
Completely changing the global energy and climate debates.

Use wind-generated electricity for power to recycle waste CO₂ into transportation fuels.
This could cut CO₂ emissions In half by mid-century.

A Tale of Two Crises: We are facing an energy crisis that could potentially devastate the world’s economy as global oil supply peaks. We are also facing the unparalleled threat of global warming. These crises are greater than any society has ever faced before, and they are entwined… The energy crisis could be postponed (at great cost) by relying on shale oil, tar sands and coal-to-liquids, but that will dramatically worsen the environmental crisis. There are certain avenues that can be followed that might help reduce global warming but would dramatically worsen the energy crisis (ban the use of coal and natural gas power plants).

We present WindFuels, offering a completely new direction for solving both crises simultaneously. Using wind energy, we can efficiently and competitively recycle the exhausted CO₂ from coal and natural gas power plants into fuels that work with today’s transportation infrastructure. These competitive fuels will eventually provide enough supply to lower fuel prices and end the energy crisis, while eliminating the consumption of fossil oil, tar sands, shale oil, and coal-to-liquids; dramatically reducing greenhouse gas emissions while improving both the local and global economy. When the WindFuels are burned, no new carbon will be released. WindFuels are carbon-neutral.

No experienced chemist has doubted that it is possible to convert CO₂ to fuels, or that the theoretical limit to the efficiency of doing this is probably between 75% and 90%. The problem has been that prior proposals for doing this conversion have had efficiencies of only 20% to 30%. In other words, the chemical energy in the liquid fuels produced (gasoline, ethanol, etc.) would be less than the 30% of the input energy required, and that input energy would be mostly electrical, which is expensive.

The combination of the eight major technical advances we have made over the past two years will now permit this conversion to be done at 60% efficiency. That’s high enough efficiency for carbon-neutral fuels made from waste CO₂ to easily compete with petroleum (the fact that the cost of petroleum has increased 3-4 fold since we started working on this has helped as well), especially when the input energy is from wind. These processes have been simulated in great detail, and are absolutely sound. Hundreds of distinguished scientists and engineers have reviewed the materials on this website, and no significant technical problems have yet been identified.

Our breakthroughs permit production of carbon-neutral ethanol, gasoline, and many chemicals from waste CO₂ and wind energy that will be competitive in the open market.

An average acre of land in the Dakotas, Kansas, or Wyoming will produce at least five times as much alcohols from wind, water, and waste CO₂ as an average acre of land in fertile farming areas devoted to biofuels.

It is likely that not everyone reading this page is a scientist or engineer. We recognize that sometimes we jump right in with technical jargon. So to make up for that, we wrote a page just for you. You may want to read the page linked below first, then return for the rest of the story. "The WindFuels™ Primer - Basic Explanation for the Non-scientist".

First, water and renewable electrical power are fed into an electrolyzer, which produces the required hydrogen. Then waste CO₂ (from coal power plants) and the renewable hydrogen are piped into our novel Renewable Fischer-Tropsch Synthesis (RFTS) plant. There they are converted into mostly mid-alcohols (ethanol, propanol, and butanol) and other valuable chemicals. These fuels may then be readily stored and distributed by conventional means – pipelines and tanker trucks. The electrolyzer also produces a huge amount of oxygen, which may provide another revenue stream, or it may be utilized in novel processes to improve the efficiency of the RFTS plant.

Better Than sequestration?
Why will WindFuels be more effective than CO2 sequestration? Oil and gas account for over 60% of the fossil CO2 emissions. Eliminating petroleum and natural gas reduces greenhouse gases more than eliminating coal. CO2 sequestration at most existing power plants would increase their power costs by 80%. Hence, the cost will probably insure that it simply won’t happen. ( Sequestration is probably much more likely to be implemented into new power plants.) By turning the exhaust from coal plants into transportation fuels, we can economically cut the use of extra-high-carbon options, such as coal-to-liquids, tar sands, and shale oil.	Sequestering a ton of CO2 prevents one ton of CO2 from being emitted into the atmosphere, adding a significant cost burden. Pumping one ton of CO2 into a WindFuels plant would profitably create about 170 gallons of liquid fuels (~0.56 tons), which keeps additional fossil fuels from being consumed . Since the CO2 is removed from the air (or smokestacks) to make the WindFuels, no new CO2 has been released. The net carbon from WindFuels is essentially zero.
Net CO2 added to the atmosphere for 1 ton of various liquid fuels:
FUEL	CO2
WindFuels	0.2 tons
Ethanol from old corn fields	2.9 tons
Conventional Oil	4.4 tons
Deep Sea Oil	5.3 tons
Heavy Oil	5.7 tons
Oil Shale, ICP	6.0 tons
Tar Sands	6.0 tons
Oil Shale, ATP	6.5 tons
Coal-to-liquids	10 tons
Shockingly, ethanol from grasslands newly converted to corn fields releases 12 tons of CO2 per ton of corn ethanol for the first 4 years. (See Science 319, 1235-1238, Mar 21, 2008.)

Heavy oil (primarily tar sands) and shale oil have 50% to 90% greater total carbon emissions than conventional oil. Coal to Liquids (CTL) usually has more than twice the carbon emissions of conventional oil. If the carbon tax on conventional oil is soon $30/bbl (as the EIA has recently recommended), the carbon tax on heavy oil will be over $45/bbl, it will be over $20/bbl on biofuels, and it will be over $60/bbl on synfuels from coal.

What size of a global investment will it take to cut global oil and gas usage by 60% over the next 40 years? Perhaps 40 trillion US$, but businesses will jump at it because it will be profitable. The IEA has recently recommended CO₂ be taxed at over $80/ton (or $300/ton-C). That would amount to $2T per year – and (in itself) would not produce any more fuel.

There are already scores of pages of detailed technical materials on this website, and more will be added weekly. We’re real science and engineering nerds, so some of the material here will be heavy going if you don’t have a background in chemical engineering or physics. But we have a page specifically for our less technical friends. Although we are interested in broader discussion of global warming, except for brief technical analyses of our competitors (like heavy oil, biofuels, etc.), this site will stay focused on WindFuels, at least for now.

For those that are interested in a very detailed design summary (and simultaneously interested in helping us to fund continued development), the "RFTS-DetailedDesign-1" can be purchased in hard-copy.

The sooner we begin directing resources toward WindFuels plants, the sooner we can rest assured that our transportation fuel, agriculture, civilization, and climate are secure for future generations. F. David Doty