EFUEL: EXTENDING THE LIFE OF COMBUSTION-POWERED VEHICLES INTO THE ELECTRIC AGE

By Piero Facchin

Pressure from luxury carmakers for synthetic eFuels has weakened the European Union’s (EU) plan to take internal combustion engines (ICEs) off the road in the future. After weeks of delay, the Council of the European Union recently adopted a regulation to eliminate carbon dioxide emissions from new cars and vans by 2035. This would have represented an effective ban on ICE cars if not for a last-minute update that provides an exemption for ICE cars that replace petrol with eFuels.

EFuel is a synthetic alternative that can be made from air and water using electricity. Although running on eFuel instead of gasoline can reduce carbon dioxide emissions, at the moment it remains expensive and inefficient. Some experts fear that making room for eFuels in clean energy transition plans will only keep more gas-guzzling cars on the road.

Recent EU regulations set a target of reducing carbon dioxide emissions produced by planet-warming cars and vans by 100% by 2035. It’s impossible for a gasoline-powered car to meet this target, so it could have created a de facto ban on the sale of new internal combustion engine cars. The rule was due to be finalized in early March, but Germany essentially withheld its vote until the rules were revised to explicitly allow conventional cars to run on eFuels.

EFuel can be made by extracting carbon dioxide from air and hydrogen from water. These molecules are combined to make new synthetic fuels. There’s a new technology called direct air capture that extracts this CO2 from the atmosphere, which is why eFuel made from renewable energies can be considered “carbon neutral”. Burning eFuel still produces carbon dioxide pollution, but the idea is that extracting CO2 from the atmosphere to make the fuel cancel out these emissions.

German carmaker Porsche is promoting eFuel as a way of addressing climate change while continuing to manufacture lightweight combustion engine vehicles, as opposed to electric vehicles, which tend to be heavier than traditional cars due to the battery. Porsche has invested over $100 million in the development of eFuels, including $75 million in a company operating a small eFuel plant in Chile.

But there could be big problems on the road ahead for synthetic fuels in the EU’s climate plans. There is no commercial supply of this alternative fuel today, and it would be very expensive to manufacture, costing around $7 a litre (more than $25 a gallon), estimates the ICCT (International Council on Clean Transportation). Extracting molecules from air and water also consumes a lot of energy, making it four times more efficient to use renewable electricity to recharge the battery of an electric vehicle than to use it to make electronic fuel for a car, according to the ICCT.