I'm so glad you brought up Porsche's "green" fuel. The stuff they doled out at some races last year cost about $45 per gallon to produce. I pieced together the following narrative from a 2023 story in
Industry Decarbonization Newsletter:
As you may know, the South American plant is in Chile, the Hanu Oni project, operated by a company called HIF Global, and
subsidized by the German government, Siemens-Energy, Porsche, and other companies.
The idea of e-fuels is to use
renewable electricity to synthesize chemicals that can be used as fuels. Ideally, burning them causes only as much carbon dioxide as what has been used in their production. E-fuels are controversial, as producing them is
very inefficient. However, a vocal group of people, particularly in Germany, believes that e-fuels will play a significant role as a future fuel for cars.
A single wind turbine currently powers the plant, on the barren coast of Chile simply because it's one of the most consistently windy places on Earth. The electricity is used to run electrolyzers that split water into hydrogen and oxygen. The hydrogen is then used together with carbon dioxide to synthesize methanol.
Until recently, HIF and its project partners had communicated that the plant would use carbon dioxide directly from the air! But the direct air capture facility for the Haru Oni plant has yet to be built. For the Haru Oni demonstration plant, the carbon dioxide comes from a biogenic source (fermentation process of a brewery). This is a temporary CO₂ source while they wait for the direct air capture technology to be ready. After some media reports highlighted the lack of a direct air capture facility, HIF and its partners have removed corresponding claims from their web site.
Haru Oni is a
small demonstration plant producing methanol from green hydrogen and biogenic carbon dioxide. A small fraction of that methanol is turned into gasoline. The technology works, but it is small scale. The output of the demonstration plant will be only 130,000 liters of synthetic gasoline, less than one gas station's worth. HIF has plans to expand production. In two steps, capacity is planned to be increased to 55 million liters e-gasoline per year by 2025 and over 550 million liters per year by 2027. To put this in perspective, while only a small demonstration plant is running right now, HIF had announced increasing production 400-fold in the next two years and 4,000-fold two years later.
These are bold plans. However, this is unlikely to happen, as the construction of these much larger production facilities has not even started. Plans are to build a larger production plant in the Cabo Negro industrial area. There already exists a fossil-fuel-based methanol plant by the company Methanex in Cabu Negro. HIF announced in October last year that the company withdrew the environmental permit application for the wind park that was supposed to power the facility in Cabo Negro.
Making fuel just from wind, water, and air – that's the promise of the Haru Oni project in Chile. But claims by the companies operating the plant contain a lot of hype.
industrydecarbonization.com
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jd
. What I said is that the tax credit would help “lower income buyers“. This was in bold print. My point is that the credit is really a subsidy that can be used regardless of the amount of tax owed, and therefore regardless of income, because it is applied off the top of the purchase price regardless of the buyer’s tax obligation. It works as a subsidy for lower income buyers who pay less than $7,500 tax. Otherwise, it would only be a benefit that higher income buyers, owing at least $7,500 in income tax, could use. Thus, a $39,000 VW iD4 can be purchased for $31,500 regardless of your tax obligation. This is the primary point of the article which I cited. I’m guessing you didn’t read it.
