Chile: Porsche sets up plant to produce near CO2-neutral fuel

The new facility will be the world's first integrated commercial plant for producing near CO2-neutral fuel.

Porsche has partnered with Siemens Energy and a number of other international companies to build an industrial plant for the production of 'near CO2-neutral fuel'. The new plant will be located in Chile, with construction work for the same having already begun.

The new facility will be the world's first integrated commercial plant for producing near CO2-neutral fuel. A pilot plant is already being built in Chilean Patagonia, which is expected to produce an initial capacity of 1,30,000 litres of eFuel by 2022. This will then be expanded in two stages, increasing to 55 million litres in 2024 and 550 million litres in 2026.

The eFuel produced at the industrial plant will be used in Porsche's very own combustion engine vehicle line-up. The first model to use the eFuel manufactured in Chile will be the Porsche Mobil 1 Supercup race cars from 2022. Porsche also mentioned that its iconic 911 model along with other products are well suited for the eFuel.

The use of the eFuel is also in line with the brand's sustainable strategy and could help Porsche take a step towards achieving CO2-neutrality by the end of the decade. As per Porsche, wind power will be used to provide energy to the electrolysers, which will split water into oxygen and hydrogen. The CO2 in the air is then filtered and combined with the hydrogen to produce synthetic methanol, which is further converted into usable eFuel.