Driving a Porsche on gasoline made from recycled CO2
Haru Oni synthetic fuel facility pilots hydrogen-methanol-gasoline process for 2026 commercialization
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Cap back in, fuel door closed.
We’ve just quenched our Panamera Sport Turismo’s thirsty fuel needle, replacing a tankful of air with a tankful of gasoline made from air. It’s some of the first synthetic ‘e-fuel’ pumped from a Porsche-partnered project that captures carbon from the atmosphere and recycles it back into carbon-neutral gasoline.
By the time we run the needle back toward the bottom, we’ve covered hundreds of kilometres of Chilean landscape in an entirely regular gasoline-powered Porsche — and all without our cruise having added any fresh dino-carbons to our planet’s wheezing atmosphere.
All of this chemical wonder is the yield of Haru Oni, a proof-of-concept facility located off a portent strip of Patagonian tarmac named Ruta del Fin del Mundo — ”The End of the World Road”.
It’s a site powered by feel-good wind energy and nestled just a hiker’s call from some of the finest trails in the hemisphere, but there’s no granola here: this is all about survival. For Porsche’s classics — everything from the 356 to the 992 — to carry on their iconic petrol-powered rhythms, some form of synthetic ‘net-zero’ e-fuel may be the only road forward.
What is an e-fuel?
E-fuels are carbon-neutral synthetic fuels produced from alternative chemical feedstocks. Now said to have reached outright compatibility with conventional gasoline, a hydrogen-fed methane-to-gasoline process recycles atmospheric carbon back into gasoline, but without many of the contaminants typical of traditional fossil fuels.
Instead of distilling dino-derived crude oil, Haru Oni’s all-in-one facility uses an on-site wind turbine to power a 250-cell electrolyzer, which in turn splits water into hydrogen and off-gassed oxygen. This green-produced ‘e-hydrogen’ is combined with carbon scrubbed from atmospheric CO2 to make ‘e-methanol’, a versatile feedstock which can be burned directly or processed with chemical catalysts in a reactor to make gasoline and light fuels, or even e-diesel, e-kerosene, and a variety of other fuels.
This method yields a chemically clean fuel with an attractive 91 AKI octane (93 RON) rating. Contaminants typical of crude processes are significantly lower, with particularly low sulfur and benzene content dirtying the burn. Chemically consistent with traditional gasoline, the final product can therefore be mixed into existing filling-station tanks and run through normal ICE cars in any proportion, and without any changes or tuning required.
Why is Porsche investing in gasoline?
Investment in petrochemicals may seem an odd course amid today’s winds of electrification — not least of all under the new accountabilities of the company’s step into public trading. There’s a broader play here, however.
Porsche has pursued an aggressive brand- and desirability-building effort in recent years, and has leaned hard into its heritage as part of this strategy. Matched perhaps only by Mercedes’ classic parts program (which even offers canned hexane fuel for the original 1885 Benz Patent Motorwagen), Porsche Classic has developed a robust infrastructure for parts supply, request tracking, and resumption of OEM production according to demand. None of it comes cheap, but it does offer a strong assurance of its cars’ longevity.
Porsche Classic is thus an investment in the hobby, but also in the brand’s classics’ on-road visibility and on-block resale values. Remember: the higher the air-cooled 911 market goes, the stronger the new cars’ value- and investment proposition may seem to prospective clients. Money, money, money — it’s a little more cynical than fans might like to let on, but it is symbiotic.
Of course, well-maintained classics won’t do anyone much good if accessible gasoline supplies dry up.
Just as Toyota is calling on legislators to refocus from surprisingly dirty ZEV mandates to more holistic life-cycle carbon-emissions targets, Porsche is shifting a few eggs into the basket of hydrocarbons that remove as much from the atmosphere as they return — admittedly still spewing carbon dioxide from their tailpipes, but netting no more per-kilometre total impact than a ZEV.
The brand continues to state its commitment to electrification targets of 50 percent by 2025 and 80 percent by 2030, but the carbon-intensive realities of BEV production, infrastructure challenges of both EV charging and hydrogen, and immediate incompatibilities of either technology with many long-distance and heavy-cargo operations make this a prudent Plan B.
How are e-fuels made?
Synthetic fuel technology has been around since the 1920s (don’t mention the war), but this particular methane-to-gas process dates back to an accidental discovery patented by Exxon-Mobil in 1974. More than just a laboratory curiosity, this Exxon-Mobil process was soon commercialized to ease fuel-supply stresses in Oceania between 1980 and 1999 and eventually answered a full third of New Zealand’s fuel needs.
Whereas the New Zealand plant’s methanol drew its carbon from underground-sequestered natural gas (net-positive emissions), the Haru Oni pilot iterates this process with its clean-powered hydrogen electrolysis from desalinated seawater, ‘recycled’ atmospheric carbon (net-zero), and the new plants’ reliance on renewable wind power for its energy-intensive processes. Today’s electrolysis-carbon-capture methanol production is also simpler, with electrolysis standing as the most mature source of hydrogen and CO2 requiring only one catalyst stage for conversion into versatile liquid ‘e-methanol’.
Haru Oni captures its carbon from the air around the plant, drawing it through a ‘monolith’ scrubber. More efficient capture is also possible through direct-air capture right at an industrial emission source, such as within the stacks of a concrete plant. This carbon is then fed into a heated and pressurized reactor with hydrogen to produce methanol. Combined with three hydrogen molecules, each carbon molecule yields one methanol molecule.
This methanol can be burned directly in a variety of applications, or even added to gasoline as a potent octane booster for high-compression forced-induction engines. This carries corrosive and other risks, however, and is considered untenable for everyday motoring and maintenance expectations. Corrosion concerns are amplified by straight methanol’s hygroscopic tendency to absorb moisture when not perfectly sealed as is possible on industrial sites.
Instead, this methanol is pumped through a further series of reactors for processing into gasoline. This process yields both short-chain ‘light gasoline’ (5-8 carbon molecules) and long-chain ‘heavy gasoline’ (8-12 carbons), the latter of which is further reacted before final stabilization and blending processes.
These methanol-to-gasoline reactors represent an important evolution over their predecessors. Earlier fixed-bed reactors had to cycle on and off as catalysts coked up and required regeneration, but Haru Oni’s e-methanol is run through modern fluidized-bed reactors for thermal, reactive, and ongoing catalytic-regenerative efficiency. This enables the plant to keep running as long as it remains powered and fed.
Also important is this method’s answer to past problems that would have compromised its classic–Porsche-friendliness. Early synthetic efforts were compromised by high durene concentrations, a constituent not found in crude which can crystallize due to its high 79.5-degree melt point. Now reduced from 10-plus to around two percent, today’s Exxon-Mobil-HIF process makes e-fuel safe for classic carbureted motoring.
Thus effectively drawn from water and air, e-methanol offers a surprisingly clean, versatile, stable, easily transported energy store and feedstock for processing into a variety of fuels. Burning e-methanol or any derivative will of course return that carbon to the atmosphere, but without contributing further pollutants.
Why Patagonia?
Many have been referring to this synthetic juice as ‘Porsche eFuel’, but there’s a little more to the suits-and-ties of the picture. These fuels are being produced by Highly Innovative Fuels (HIF), an electrofuel multinational founded by Andes Mining and Energy (AME) in partnership with ENAP, Chile’s state oil company.
Porsche’s present focus is on the company’s city-block-sized Haru Oni demonstration plant, and Stuttgart has invested some US$75m in the project, with a long-term 12.5 percent stake, one board seat, and an agreement to purchase fuel produced by the Haru Oni pilot for its Porsche Experience Centres and Porsche Supercup race series. The plant is now stepping into full production, and is forecasted to produce 130,000 litres (817 barrels) of e-fuel annually.
The methanol-to-gas process employed at Haru Oni is licenced from Exxon-Mobil and integrated into the full site process by Siemens, with Porsche specifying product requirements to suit its compatibility standards.
Why the bottom of the world? Situated outside Punta Arenas, Haru Oni’s 3.7-hectare site benefits from quadruple the wind-turbine efficiency of any possible German site, along with close proximity to a port — and one of the last airports before Antarctica.
While the $55-million Haru Oni plant will not itself be scaled, it is anticipated to continue operating for 25 years. Power will continue to be generated on-site by the site’s one 3.4-megawatt wind turbine, with planned upgrades including the installation of BESS battery power reserves to sustain operations under low- or excessive-wind conditions (<4 km/h; >90 km/h) that would otherwise interrupt operations. A full-scale commercial plant is set for construction nearby, its first phase powering itself with 60 turbines turning 300 MW of wind energy. This plant will aim for an annual electrofuel output of 55 million litres by Q2 2025, then 66 million litres by 2026.
Can e-fuels scale to meet global demand?
Synthetic fuels’ path forward is long, but could mature toward broader commercial feasibility as a carbon-neutral supplement or alternative if afforded the sort of political will seen of the electrification push. HIF plans for 12 further full-scale plants in Chile, the U.S., and Australia at a cost of US$50B, with an anticipated daily output of 168,000 barrels per day. This undertaking would recycle an estimated two million tons of carbon per year, roughly equivalent to neutralizing the emissions of 400,000-plus-cars. Porsche insists that this carbon-neutrality even renders negligible the environmental impact of shipping to Europe, though this statement is difficult to accept at face value.
Zooming out, global oil consumption is approaching 100 million barrels per day, with Canada alone consuming some 800,000 barrels. Of those, some 35 percent are processed into gasoline and short-chain light fuels.
Assuming the 35-percent global proportion, this HIF plan would answer approximately one two-hundredth (0.005) of present gasoline demand. These HIF projects would require an incredible two gigawatts of renewable electricity; scaled 200 times at present demand and process efficiency, that can be extrapolated to 400 gigawatts’ requirement to meet all worldwide gasoline consumption. For perspective, global renewable electricity production is now approaching 3.1 terawatts, and is projected to grow to eight terawatts by 2030.
Further forward, HIF emphasizes that this technology can be adapted to existing fossil-petrochemical plants as well. Facing the spectre of their fossil refineries’ gradual obsolescence, oil companies are likely to consider such retrofits to ensure these major capital investments’ continued profitability into the net-zero age.
None of this comes without cost, however: the Haru Oni pilot’s e-fuel currently costs approximately CAD $15/L to produce. Scaling up for full commercial output is expected to rein costs back to a rack rate of around $2/L — par for Europe but still high for North American expectations, and that’s still before retailer markup. Crude is cheap, but energy-intensive electrolysis and green infrastructure is not.
Curiously, certification of this synthetic fuel seems no great concern: as answered plainly by one HIF representative, “it’s gasoline”. If anything, the larger regulatory question will be how rules will favour or sideline carbon-neutral fuels against dirtier, carbon-positive incumbents.
With these costly realities in mind, carbon-neutral fuels will likely require active political incentives to proliferate. As nuance topples ever more eggs from legislators’ baskets of 2035-electrification optimism, however, we can expect to see further regulatory (or punitive) attention focused on liquid fuels and their continued role in society. Promotion of carbon-neutral fuels as minimally disruptive alternatives, then, may soon materialize in the form of state subsidies or advantageous tax structures for e-fuels over net-positive fossil- and bio-fuels.
What does this mean for Canadian drivers?
Popular discourse continues to pivot around visions of complete electrification by 2035, but as repeatedly emphasized by Driving’s David Booth, a growing body of analysis points to a diversified energy portfolio as the answer to our climate and transportation crises. As Booth explores in tomorrow’s “Motor Mouth,” affordably scaled carbon-neutral fuels could complement a PHEV shift that would yield even lower lifetime carbon emissions than wholesale electrification.
Even at scale (and as evidenced by Porsche’s own roadmap), carbon-neutral e-fuels do not seem poised to obviate the ZEV push. Still, for everyday drivers, such a prospect affords some assurance that the gas-burning vehicles they’ve invested their earnings in will continue working away — and paying down their manufactures’ carbon debt — into a foreseeable future.
This piece was awarded the Environmental Journalism Award at the Automobile Journalists of Canada (AJAC) 2023 National Journalism Awards.
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