>>11230047Exactly this. There is an company up in Canada, Carbon Engineering, that has a working test plant that extracts CO2 from air & H2 from water using hydropower, and turns it into synthetic fuels. They claim the full sized plant they are building will be able to produce fuels for ~$1 per liter. That's about twice the price of regular jet fuel, prior to any taxes. According to the International Air Transport Fuel Association, fuel cost make up about 24% of an airlines expenses, so even with that doubling airlines will still be much cheaper than maintaining a passenger rail network.
It is important to note that outside of a handful of East Asian lines in very dense areas, all passenger rail needs very heavy subsidies to operate; airlines/airports also get subsidies, but smaller rate. Air travel gets about 1.25 cents per passenger mile subsidy in the US; Amtrak is around 26 cents per passenger mile in Federal & State subsidies. Any Europeans want to chime in on how much their government subsidize various transportation methods?
