They aren't sexy and few people talk about them, but if you do an engineering and economic analysis, some form of carbon-neutral liquid fuel is still very much on the table as a reasonably long-term energy transport solution. The characteristics of liquid hydrocarbon fuel are pretty good in most ways, which is why we still use them. For instance, have you ever worked the math on the amount of energy being moved when you pump ten gallons of gas in one minute and converted that back to Watts? There isn't an immediately obvious replacement for them that actually works as well. If the problems of the particular way we obtain them can be solved, then it's worth it to continue to figure out how to use them more efficiently.
And while 20 years ago you might have thought it would "just be easier" to switch away entirely to something like electric vehicles, research on that front has not proceeded as satisfactorily as would have been nice (batteries, oh batteries, why can't you just be an order of magnitude better?), and "fix the problems that liquid hydrocarbons have" has started to look less like a stupid idea.
And while 20 years ago you might have thought it would "just be easier" to switch away entirely to something like electric vehicles, research on that front has not proceeded as satisfactorily as would have been nice (batteries, oh batteries, why can't you just be an order of magnitude better?), and "fix the problems that liquid hydrocarbons have" has started to look less like a stupid idea.