The joint venture making the industrial production of renewable fuels possible is composed of four partners: Sunfire GmbH, the world’s leading PtL-technology provider; Climeworks AG, the pioneer in CO2 air capture technology; Paul Wurth SA (SMS group), a leading international EPC company for steel manufacturers and the green investment company Valinor, parent company of Norsk Vind, the largest private wind power developer in Norway.
Using a single step co-electrolysis process, the innovative technologies of Sunfire and Climeworks convert renewable electricity, water and CO2 captured from ambient air and unavoidable CO2 sources into syngas. Renewable fuels, such as jet fuel, are then produced through further processing and refining. The certified end products can be used directly in existing infrastructures.
Radical change
At present, the European transport sector is still heavily reliant on fossil fuels. Especially for hard-to-electrify sectors such as the aviation industry, this new project holds the promise for a radical change towards climate-neutral transportation.
“Norsk e-fuel makes the supply of renewable fuel possible on a scale that is larger than has ever been achieved before – something that is crucial if we are to make global transportation truly sustainable,” said Climeworks co-founder and co-CEO Christoph Gebald. The first plant with a production capacity of 10 million liters annually will go into operation in 2023. This plant will be upscaled 10-fold to produce 100 million liters of renewable fuel before 2026. The plant will then save 250 000 tonnes of CO2 emissions from industries such as the aviation industry every year. The upscaled, industrial sized plant will then serve as blueprint for a nationwide roll-out of the project.
“To put this in perspective, only one industrial scale plant will already provide enough blended renewable fuel for the top five domestic aviation routes in Norway combined (Oslo-Trondheim, Oslo-Bergen, Oslo-Stavanger, Oslo-Tromso and Oslo-Bodo). This would effectively cut the current flight emissions between these cities by about 50 %.” explains Lars Helge Helvig, Founder of Valinor and Chairman of Norsk Vind.
The planning of the first plant to be located at Herøya Industry Park in Porsgrunn is already well underway.
Image: Leonid Andronov/Shutterstock
