Resolve global warming and produce energy?

While preparing a university course, I may have stumbled upon one answer to global warming and America's foreign energy reliance.

The idea comes from NASA's Mars mission, where the plan is to convert the carbon dioxide in its atmosphere to oxygen and fuel for the return trip to Earth. The chemical process is in use right now on the Space platform and has been used on most shuttle flights. The process is a Sabatier reaction, which involves the use of hydrogen gas, generated from electrolysis of water by solar panels, which reacts with carbon dioxide, to produce oxygen and methane. By combining this reaction with the Reverse Water Gas Shift reaction, which uses carbon monoxide, another greenhouse gas, there can be further production of ethanol or ethylene.

The net products are oxygen, two clean fuels, and the basic building block of plastics, while consuming carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide. The system recycles its own hydrogen back into the process, and when enough heat is generated, it can sustain itself. The catalysts are readily available minerals in the U.S. The Australians are building a prototype solar furnace which generates a similar reaction.

Building industrial scale converters close to cities and other producers of greenhouse gases would reduce or eliminate those emissions at the source, going far beyond meeting any treaty limits on greenhouse gas production. Developing, building and maintaining these conversion plants would generate thousands of American jobs. Elimination of the weather related risks and elimination of the energy consumption needed for agricultural based ethanol production, generation of methane as a clean burning fuel, and domestic production of plastics would greatly reduce the energy-related foreign trade deficit and eliminate reliance on unstable foreign energy supplies.

Happy New Year ! Let's make America great again!