A few years back, the Fischer-Tropsche process was “rediscovered” and all the rage in various synthetic fuel articles and websites. It was developed by the Germans who were at the time the world’s best chemists and knew what the heck they were doing. The process involves the pyrolysis of coal with steam to a mixture of water vapor, diatomic hydrogen gas, and carbon monoxide. This “syngas” mixture was then put in heavy duty reaction tanks, and heated to great temperatures and pressures, thereby reversing that pesky thermodynamic arrow mentioned above. However the kinetics are very slow, and if left in this state would just remain mostly syngas. But introduce some metallic iron or cobalt, and the energy barrier is circumvented and the reaction takes place at a reasonable rate. All the heat for coal decomposition, plus that to increase the temperture and pressure at reaction conditions represent energy expended into the system to get the desired reaction product. The resulting gasoline, or whater new hydrocarbon you have made represents the net sum of all the effort you put into making it. And as the saying goes, there is no free lunch... especially in chemistry.
By the end of 1944 about 60% of the fuel used by the German military was obtained by the Fischer-Tropsche process