– Why can’t we just ‘produce’ gasoline, like synthetically?

Question

– Why can’t we just ‘produce’ gasoline, like synthetically?

In: 439

Answer 1

Lots of really great answers here explaining “you can”, and that’s true. The ELI5 follow up to those excellent answers is:

Photosynthetic organisms did a great job of solar energy capture in times long past and the resultant crude oil is an astoundingly good repository of that energy capture. So much so that any direct synthesis of gasoline not relying on chemical energy already stored is going to look pretty bad/inefficient (and hence hugely costly).