Wolfgang Schwanke wrote in :

wrote in :

There are no alternatives to oil.

The electric grid uses a vanishingly small amount of oil.

The transportation system uses a vanishingly small amount of
electricity.

Concerning ground transport, there's rail which nowadays is mostly
electric. The combustion engine is really only indispensable in air and
ship transport, as you say, and a fraction of ground transport which
for various reasons can't be transferred to rail.

Technically the problem is trivial; manufacture synthetic fuels. We've
known how to do that for half a century.

Practically the problem is enourmous; the estimated costs I've seen
for synthetic fuels would be many times the current cost of gasoline
and diesel.

There are methods for making oil from coal. Somewhere I read that the
process has been revived in China. If it's so uneconomical, why are
they doing it?

It's becoming ecomonically viable to do it in the west as well.


Bertie