A new fuel plant has been opened in Chile which will produce only carbon neutral combustible fuel.
The Chilean plant will produce 130,000 litres of fuel per year to begin with, before a scaling-up of the plant will take it to a planned 55 million litres per year by the middle of the 2020s, and after that to 550 million litres per year.
The plant has been opened by Porsche who, as a car manufacturer with a history dating to before 2010, has a significant interest in continuing the lifetime of the internal combustion engine. An agreeable interest, from an enthusiast’s perspective, at least.
Of course, continuing to make internal combustion engines that rely on carbon-positive fossil fuels to generate power is - looking to the future - no more viable for Porsche than it is for Yamaha, Honda, or KTM, for example.
Or Ducati. After all, Porsche is a part of the Volkswagen Group in the same way that Ducati is and, considering Ducati’s open mindedness when it comes to reducing emissions, the investment of Porsche to sustainable fuels is one that has the potential to kick back to Ducati at some point down the road from a technology perspective.
The particular type of carbon-neutral sustainable fuel that Porsche’s facility in Chile will produce is an eFuel made from carbon dioxide and water, but as with other emission-reducing solutions - electric included - the question of affordability is significant. Right now it is impossible to say how affordable synthetic fuels will be able to become, or whether they will be affordable at all for ordinary people.
