Eli5 of we can make lab diamonds on a large scale why can’t we do the same for oil and gas.
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We use oil and gas as a source of energy. It’s free energy in the ground you just pump up and then set on fire.
In order to artifically make oil or gas, you need to put in energy somehow. Energy doesn’t just appear out of thin air. So that means electricity that you have to use to make the gas or oil. No process is 100% efficient so not only do you lose energy when you transform oil into electricity, you then lose energy again when you transform electricity into oil.
So you can’t just make oil and gas like that. You have to use another energy source, but if you already have energy, why make oil or gas?
Well, energy is difficult to store. Right now we are starting to have a lot of renewable energy which depend on outside factors like sun/wind. Once you have built a wind turbine any energy you gain is free, but you can’t always use it.
So if you have too much wind energy on a windy day in denmark or something, you could use some of that extra energy to make oil or gas. Right now it’s mostly looking into making hydrogen as a fuel source, because its very easy and efficient to do. But the step from hydrogen to natural gas(methane CH4) is not very big.
So making artificial oil and gas is actually something we are looking into, but mostly because it works as a way to store excess renewable energy.
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