EDITORIAL: The future is back

As I was working on this issue's cover story - a look at the current state of low- and no-carbon fuels and the potential they hold - the cyclical nature of life made itself readily apparent (once again). I will warn those of you who were involved in the automotive industry a decade or two ago that you might experience similar flashbacks when you read about how eFuels could, if everything works the way it's supposed to, provide a way for much of today's internal combustion engines to power legitimately zero-new-emission vehicles, especially in regions of the world where EVs don't yet make sense. That's great. Well, it sounds great, at least. The many promises made by producers and researchers of synthetic fuels sound strikingly similar to what the companies supporting biofuels were saying back when George W. Bush was still president. The fuel is cleaner, they said. We can keep (some of) the same infrastructure, or just modify it slightly, they said. This will work with EVs to make the whole future brighter. That was the message.

Obviously, ethanol and biodiesel have not taken over the world's gas stations. Just ask the Coskatas, BioWillies and Solazymes of the era. There are, of course, notable technical differences between those biofuels and the next-gen eFuels that some automakers and oil companies are researching today. I'm not trying to compare them directly to find out which is better. The point is, things often move in cycles. As different as the auto industry is from where it was in decades past, certain ideas just cycle their way in and then back out before returning.