Electricity, e-fuels or biofuel - who will win?

Electricity, e-fuels or biofuel - who will win?

Current Austrian and largely European policy relies on battery-electric vehicles in car transport and provides considerable financial support for this. Scarce renewable energy and the high degree of efficiency in the case of direct electricity generation clearly speak in favor of this technology. But what measures can be considered for the huge global motor vehicle population, which consists almost entirely of combustion vehicles and will continue to grow at least until 2035? The GSV focused on this question as part of its forum “Vehicle drives by 2030 – sustainable and impactful”. All experts at the forum agreed that the climate goals set cannot be achieved without effective measures.

Patrick Haenel, Manager Mobility, Energy & Industrial Application Testing at Shell Germany, reports during his keynote: “We at Shell assume that energy demand will be 60% higher by 2060 than today.” According to Haenel, traffic causes 25% of global CO2 emissions, for which cars and trucks are mainly responsible. New registrations of e-vehicles alone will not be able to get this problem under control in the foreseeable future, which is why Shell has developed products for the existing fleet that are already leading to significant CO2 reductions today and can make even more valuable contributions in the future. Shell's R33 Blue Diesel, which consists of up to 33% renewable components and is already available in Germany, can already save 22% of CO2 emissions across the entire impact chain. The remaining 78% is currently compensated for through natural compensatory measures such as reforestation. Shell also offers a similar product called E33 for gasoline vehicles; it is composed of 10% bioethanol and 23% bionaphtha. The introduction of E20 is currently more realistic, but E33 could have a significantly greater impact, adds Haenel.

Battery-electric vehicles are undoubtedly the best choice for new cars, but provided that there is direct electricity generation. This is the only way these vehicles can achieve an efficiency of over 60%. As soon as intermediate storage becomes necessary, the efficiency drops significantly and is no longer far away from the current efficiencies of hydrogen drives at 25% and e-fuels at 17%. Shell is also investing in electromobility and already operates 90,000 charging points worldwide, with 500,000 expected by 2025. "EU legislation is currently breaking the system down to a subsystem (TtW - from the tank to the wheel). Describing electricity as CO2-free on this basis is not correct and does not help the climate," points out Helmut Eichlseder, head of the Institute for Thermodynamics and Sustainable Drive Systems at Graz University of Technology, and continues: "We will have to anchor appropriate requirements for the supply of the stock in the legislation, otherwise the companies will not make the necessary investments."

Austria could already take the first step towards lower emissions in the existing fleet today, explains Norbert Harringer, CEO of AGRANA Beteiligungs-AG. The Agrana plant in Pischelsdorf could already provide the required quantities of bioethanol for an E10 introduction in Austria. Harringer: "Instead of exporting excess amounts of ethanol primarily to Germany, we could achieve CO2 savings of 200,000 tonnes per year by increasing the admixture in Austria. We should use this bridging technology until large-scale use of alternative fuels and drives is possible."