The innovation IS happening OUTSIDE of govt intervention.
Fracking nat gas boom.
Soon you’ll see vehicle fleets switching over.
It’s about half the equivalent cost of diesel right now, and probably that ratio improves over the next several years.
To convert coal or gas into liquid fuels Sasol (2010 profits of $2.3 billion on $17 billion sales) uses something called the Fischer-Tropsch process that was developed by German scientists in the 1920s. It later helped fuel Hitler’s war effort. Later, perfection of the process helped South Africa fuel its economy during the apartheid years; in South Africa Sasol makes 190,000 barrels per day of fuel from coal. Because the process removes any pollutants like sulfur and heavy metals, the resultant diesel is the cleanest burning in the world.
And we have centuries of each, to give us a stable domestic fuel supply, while INDUSTRY works out something better without tax moneys.
SASOL is just ONE company out of several, that are making profits with this rather old technology.
It works; therefore, Greenies are against it.