Scientists have recently shown that off-peak wind energy can be used to recycle CO2 into ethanol, gasoline, and jet fuel at up to 60% efficiency. Using off-peak renewable energy to recycle CO2 into transportation fuels addresses both the oil and the climate challenges, and it completely stabilizes the power grid, no matter how much wind and solar are added. These wind-generated carbon-neutral fuels, dubbed WindFuels, will compete when oil is above $40 to $90/bbl, depending mostly on the price of the off-peak low-carbon energy. Detailed scientific, engineering, and economics analyses are available at http://windfuels.com/ .

The essence of the grid problem is that electrical energy must be used when it is produced. To get rid of excess off-peak energy, the producers have been paying users to take it – up to $200/MWhr! Negative-price, low-carbon, off-peak energy will become increasingly available as long as wind is added more quickly than long-distance transmission capacity is expanded – or until many WindFuels plants start coming online.

The challenge with wind has been getting wind energy from good sites to where and when it is needed. Efficient conversion of off-peak wind energy and waste CO2 into standard liquid fuels solves these problems. Annual WindFuels production per land area in good wind regions will exceed biofuels production density in fertile farming areas by a factor of 4 to 30.

The cost of producing ethanol and gasoline from CO2 and wind energy will depend mostly on the cost of the off-peak wind energy. In some areas, the cost of off-peak wind energy is already below 2 cents/kWhr and it continues to drop as more wind is added. At this rate, the cost of ethanol and even gasoline from wind and CO2 can be below $1.50/gal. There is no net carbon dioxide added to the atmosphere from gasoline or ethanol that has been made from waste CO2.