The Economic Council had invited to a morning briefing via online video conference on the topic of e-fuels. The contact to the speaker, Prof. Dr. Thomas Willner, had been arranged by aproxito, and Ulrich Dietz moderated the event.

Prof. Dr. Willner works with the Process Engineering Research Group at Hamburg University of Applied Sciences (HAW Hamburg) in cooperation with the spin-off Nexxoil GmbH to develop a novel process for producing liquid fuels and/or chemicals from leftover and waste materials. To this end, the raw materials are converted by a special process into mineral oil substitutes and then refined into pure hydrocarbons using green electrolysis hydrogen.

In his presentation, Prof. Dr. Willner described the process and explained its significant advantages: Given the current global vehicle fleet with a large predominance of combustion engines (still also in Germany!), in the foreseeable future the by far greatest lever for climate protection in transport lies in the use of CO₂-saving alternative fuels. With this fleet, CO₂ emissions can be effectively reduced immediately without engine modifications by increasing the proportion of alternative fuels.

More information is available on the website of HAW: here and here (in German only):