The economy of Corpus Christi, Texas, is largely built on fossil fuels. A stone’s throw away from major oil and gas fields, the port city is home to dozens of fossil fuel companies. It exports more crude oil every year than any other city in the US.
But Corpus Christi’s future fortunes, at least in the eyes of one startup, will be made off a fuel derived from carbon dioxide. If it can be scaled, that fuel could play a vital role in cleaning up the hardest-to-decarbonize portions of the transportation industry from aviation to heavy-duty trucking.
Since its Corpus Christi facility came online in October, Sacramento, California-based Infinium has become one of the first e-fuel makers in the world to turn industrial-scale production from a concept into a reality.
At its plant, electrolyzers break down water into hydrogen and oxygen, using electricity generated from nearby wind and solar farms. The hydrogen is then transported to a reactor, where it meets CO2 captured from local refineries, setting off a series of complex chemical reactions aided by patented catalysts. The result is a synthetic fuel with the same chemical properties as its fossil fuel-based cousins.
Hydrocarbons — compounds of hydrogen and carbon atoms — are the basis of crude oil that is turned into fuels to power everything from trucks to jets. But those atoms can be combined in an industrial setting and made into a substitute fuel that can have lower planet-warming impacts.
Aviation is responsible for more than 2% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. Freight transportation — done largely by truck, ship and rail — contributes another 8%. Both figures are expected to balloon in the coming decades as demand for travel and shipping increases while easily decarbonized sectors of the economy cut their emissions. Regulations such as the EU’s increased scrutiny of heavy-duty vehicles and its sustainable aviation fuel mandate are putting pressure on these industries to clean up their pollution.
With demand soaring, there’s a growing push to fast-track solutions, including but not limited to e-fuels. Practically nonexistent five years ago, the e-fuel market will reach nearly $50 billion by 2030, according to some industry estimates.
Using electrolysis to make hydrogen-based products — the backbone technology for e-fuel — is not new. Factories deployed the technique to produce ammonia as early as the 1920s. Most of those plants were decommissioned in the following years as a cheaper alternative (converting natural gas and coal into ammonia) lured away customers. That alternative, though, is a major source of greenhouse gas emissions, while electrolysis done using clean energy is carbon-free. The tide may be turning again as a growing number of companies, ranging from airlines to freight truck operators, rethink their climate toll.
While commercial production of e-fuel is still in its infancy, “it’s getting a lot of interest,” says Rose Oates, an analyst with research firm BloombergNEF.
E-fuel can be a “dominant player” in decarbonizing transportation, says Robert Schuetzle, founder and chief executive officer of Infinium. The three-year-old startup has 13 more projects under development in Texas and elsewhere.
At Infinium’s Corpus Christi facility, machinery works day and night to produce mostly e-diesel for trucking, alongside e-kerosene as a jet fuel and e-naphtha, which is commonly used as a solvent. If the facility runs at full capacity, it can make roughly 3 million liters of e-fuel each year. The company doesn’t break down the volume of each product, but if all of it was e-diesel, it would be enough to power one truck with a payload of 20-odd tons on 190 trips around the equator.
Amazon, which has pledged to zero out its emissions by 2040, has claimed a chunk of the fuel. While the e-commerce giant is increasingly electrifying its delivery vehicles, e-fuel is a “promising tool for reducing emissions” in freight transportation, says Chris Atkins, Amazon’s director of worldwide operations sustainability. That’s because e-diesel could deliver immediate climate gains without a massive infrastructure overhaul, he says.