Reaching Net-Zero requires emission reduction as well as CDR; CarbonBlue can help us do both, by playing a key role in an emerging, mission-critical industry which bridges carbon removal and renewable energy: e-fuels.
Converging Paths to Net Zero
The IPCC’s reports clearly indicate that mitigating climate change and securing a sustainable future for humanity will only be achieved if we manage to reduce emissions down to the bare minimum, as well as establish large scale CDR, both nature-based and engineered.
Emission-reduction comes in many forms; a big part of it will be the result of streamlining and honing existing processes to maximize efficiency and reduce energy consumption down to a minimum, but the lion’s share of it is expected to be achieved by transitioning to sustainable, renewable electricity sources, which do not emit CO2 while generating electricity.
However, there are some carbon-intensive industrial sectors whose electrification is not on the horizon.
Hard-to-Abate Industries
Two of the most high-profile and emission-intensive hard-to-abate industries are the maritime shipping and aviation sectors. Shipping2 and aviation3 are responsible for a whopping 2% each – or 4% total – of all global emissions1. They are hard to abate because the technologies they are based on aren’t compatible with electricity. But what if we could switch out their emission-intensive fossil fuels with an alternative source of non-electric green energy?
This is what e-fuels are.
The E-Fuel Solution
When we burn fuel, we get water, CO2, and energy. Combustion engines harvest the energy, and emit the CO2 and water into the environment.
However, this process can be reversed: combine water, CO2, and energy in just the right way, and you’ll find yourself with fuel.
To be environmentally friendly and sustainable, however, you can’t just use any CO2 or any energy. The energy you input into this process must be sustainable, renewable energy – otherwise you’d only be “kicking the can down the road” and pushing the emission source someplace else, rather than eliminating it. The CO2 you use can’t be “new” CO2 produced by burning fossil fuels or other CO2-emitting industrial processes – instead, it must be CO2 removed from the carbon cycle, thereby ensuring no new CO2 is added to the environment when the e-fuel is burned.
If you check all of these marks, you’re left with what we call e-fuel; but another way to think about it is as chemical storage for renewable energy. Importantly, the water, CO2 and energy you use in this process must be cheap enough to provide a financially viable alternative to fossil fuels.4
E-fuels have more than just energy density working for them; unlike other sustainable energy solutions, e-fuels don’t require new infrastructure or other ancillary technologies to have an immediate effect. Since they are chemically similar enough to fossil fuels to be switched out interchangeably, they can be utilized as soon as they’re produced, giving the hard-to-abate industries that use them the ability to become carbon-neutral in the very near future. No need to construct new fleets of planes and ships with EV technology or electric engines – simply switch over to e-fuels, and reduce 4% of global emissions, or two gigatons per year, just like that.
So, as you can probably tell, we’re big believers in the e-fuel industry – but where does CarbonBlue come in?
Water, Energy, and CO2
We’ve established that to produce e-fuels we need three things: water, green CO2, and renewable energy. One of the problems e-fuel producers face today is the fact that sources of cheap green CO2 are usually located in industrial areas, where energy is at a premium, while on the other hand, areas where renewable energy is cheap and abundant are often remote and removed from industrial infrastructure.
This is where CarbonBlue enters the picture. Since water is one of main ingredients in e-fuel production, e-fuel facilities are connected to sources of water in their nearby environment. This means that e-fuel facilities have pre-existing infrastructure that, when integrated with CarbonBlue technology, can provide a cheap, reliable, on-site source of green CO2.
Beyond cutting costs and simplifying logistics, this also reduces further emissions and energy expenditure by bringing one of the main raw materials required by this industry into e-fuel production as an integral part of the production facilities themselves, thereby allowing the construction of e-fuel facilities in previously unviable locations, and bridging the gap between cheap green CO2 supply and low-cost green energy.
It seems that e-fuels will be an integral part of any sustainable future energy economy; to us this means that CarbonBlue will have to be an integral part of that economy as well.
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1 https://ourworldindata.org/ghg-emissions-by-sector
2 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s44312-023-00001-2
