[biofunsf]

> He foresees great platforms all around the ocean, harvesting energy from magma holes and using it to produce low-carbon synthetic fuels that could be shipped to shore.

This sounds like an energy storage solution as well? Where would the low carbon mass come for such a fuel production scheme? Haven’t heard this idea for energy storage/transport before.

[rafaelmn]

Hydrogen is one thing that comes to mind. I guess if your not concerned about efficiency there could be a lot of ways to do this.

[ianburrell]

It is weird that proposes floating platforms where there are plenty of volcanoes on land that could be tapped. Much easier than going through miles of ocean before drilling. Also, land can be connected to the grid; they could run cables from Iceland to Europe.

Making low carbon synthetic fuels is talked about a lot here and elsewhere. The main problem is that it is more expensive than hydrogen. But lets you use existing vehicles but with much larger fuel costs.

[yetihehe]

> Where would the low carbon mass come for such a fuel production scheme?

From CO2 in air.

[dredmorbius]

Better yet: CO2 in seawater.

We know that the oceans are a sink for atmospheric carbon dioxide (oceanic acidification is a direct consequence of this), and that it's energetically less costly (~30%--60% of atmospheric capture) and probably technically simpler to recover CO2 from seawater than the atmosphere.

The concept's been studied for decades at M.I.T. and the US Naval Research Laboratory, the latter of which released a flurry of research articles in the 2010s on the concept. I'd written of those a ways back at Reddit:

<https://web.archive.org/web/20230604174145/https://old.reddi...>