e-fuels’ benefits over the alternatives are unparalleled

An inde­pend­ent study by the renowned Joan­neum Insti­tute shows that the eco-bal­ance (Life Cycle Ana­lysis) of e-fuels, which are pro­duced on the basis of renew­able energy sources, cor­res­ponds to that of bat­tery elec­tric vehicles powered exclus­ively by "green" elec­tri­city. All the more reason to approach the CO₂-neut­ral future with a mind open to new tech­no­lo­gies.

All vari­ants of e-fuels can make use of exist­ing stor­age, trans­port and dis­tri­bu­tion infra­struc­ture. Com­pared to other renew­able energy sources, this means that high invest­ment costs for new sys­tem infra­struc­tures are not required. This res­ults in another import­ant advant­age: e-fuels can be used imme­di­ately. They are the cli­mate-neut­ral fuel solu­tion with the shortest imple­ment­ation time com­pared to the altern­at­ives.

If we want to meet the energy require­ments of our mobil­ity, industry and private house­holds exclus­ively with renew­able energy sources in the future, this presents us with a major chal­lenge: the place and time of energy pro­duc­tion only meet our energy require­ments to a lim­ited extent. For example, large quant­it­ies of solar and wind energy tend to be avail­able in very sparsely pop­ulated regions or off­shore where there are few people who need the energy. Like­wise, the demand for energy rises sharply in winter - a sea­son with par­tic­ularly low local pro­duc­tion capa­cit­ies. e-fuels are the only renew­able energy source that can be effi­ciently stored in large quant­it­ies and trans­por­ted cost-effect­ively over long dis­tances, enabling them to meet our energy needs when and where they are greatest.

Most decar­bon­iz­ation con­cepts are exclus­ively future-ori­ented. Bat­tery-powered cars, hydro­gen-powered trucks and altern­at­ive heat­ing sys­tems only start redu­cing green­house gas emis­sions once they have been man­ufac­tured, sold, put into oper­ation, and the exist­ing infra­struc­ture replaced. In the com­ing dec­ades, how­ever, count­less "old" sys­tems, machines and vehicles from the mobil­ity, indus­trial and heat­ing sec­tors will still be in use. Pre­ma­ture replace­ment of exist­ing vehicles and facil­it­ies will even double the bur­den on the envir­on­ment, because the CO₂ input required dur­ing man­ufac­ture is not "amort­ized" over its entire ser­vice life. 

e-fuels offer a simple and cost-effect­ive way to quickly reduce cli­mate-dam­aging emis­sions to a con­sid­er­able extent - without hav­ing to replace expens­ive infra­struc­ture and cap­ital goods before the end of their ser­vice life.