Sounds like another great money-wasting scheme to me. But it’s great for Professorette Chu, whose research is probably funded by Steven Chu (no relation?).
Meantime, they’re blocking the nuclear plants and shutting down the coal plants that would produce the needed electricity to do this.
Lights out! Time to freeze in the dark, while starving the plants.
Maybe this could make coal-to-liquid more efficient? My understanding of the process is that it takes energy (in the form of heat) and CO2. Maybe this method could do the job using less energy?
Ultimately I think the goal of this research was to make it cheaper to reduce CO2 emissions, however it may be useful in other applications.