Right, but the point is, once this costs nearly-the-same as methane extracted from the ground, it's not worth it to pull methane out of the ground! We'd stop having an incentive to add more CO2 to the atmosphere!
We'd be able to get to net-zero carbon / methane emissions without having to substantially change our living conditions. Cities or states would "just" bottle up some liquid methane for the winter months (or summer months) and seasonal energy usage changes become much easier to manage. (I'm aware that would involve creating more infrastructure.)
I don't think it does, though that would be great. Burning the methane on site as waste is still significantly better than releasing it into the air (converting methane to mostly CO2 is still better than not doing it).
This technology doesn't need to solve global warming. Even if it just buys us some more time, it is fantastic news.
If you could get that methane and use it for something productive, what would you propose? I'm looking for ideas, some process that has relatively easy to transport equipment (no expensive big buildings which have to be demolished when oil field is depleted), energy intensive and makes some valuable product with that energy. If someone has any wild/interesting ideas in this space, I'd like to hear it.
Methane and its siblings (methanol, ethanol, ethane) are used as a basic feedstock for more advanced chemical processes, like plastic synthesis, or drugs, or plenty of other organic compounds.
Obviously the easiest one is "store, then burn it for energy", but it seems to me, with this technology, that methane or propane powered vehicles might see lower fuel costs. This process would just make them carbon neutral.
Problem #1 is finding people to pay for it until then.
Problem #2 is that this will make fore expensive energy at the end, efficiency being one problem and capital cost of those idle gas turbines being another. We'll have to wait and see if these ever plan any role beyond a demonstration project or two, but I'm skeptical it'll compete on price.
