"We don't have time to disregard any option for climate protection"
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C OVER STORY Interv iew
“We don’t have time to disregard any option for climate protection” If we are to achieve our climate targets, governments need to impose stringent, forward-looking regulations. In the interview Dr. Uwe Lahl, Director-General at the Baden-Württemberg Ministry of Transport, highlights possible solutions and explains why a technology-neutral approach is absolutely essential.
MTZ _ Uwe Lahl, which synthetic fuels do you
believe offer the best opportunities? LAHL _ Synthetic
fuels that are produced using renewable electricity and are therefore climate-neutral are currently only available in very small volumes and are much more expensive than fossil fuels. On the one hand, we need the German government and the European Union to put in place a regulatory framework to enable the production technologies to be brought up to an industrial scale quickly
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and to expand the production capacity, so that these renewable fuels can be made widely available. On the other hand, we must introduce innovations and achieve economies of scale. Renewable fuels will primarily be used in areas where there are no technological alternatives that are more cost-effective. Because the option of electrification is available for cars, buses, light commercial vehicles and, in some cases, trucks, rail vehicles and fuel cell vehicles, synthetic fuels will be an appro-
priate solution in particular in the aviation and international shipping industries and for some road freight transport. But vehicles with combustion engines will be in use on our roads for many years and decades to come, which means that for them a better fuel is needed. What do you think are the prospects for synthetic fuels in the car sector?
I think e-kerosene and e-diesel have a long-term future. This makes it all the
more important for us to open up the supply of climate-neutral fuels to reduce the impact of the transport sector on the climate in the long term. Blending synthetic fuels for use in the existing car fleet will make an important contribution to achieving the climate targets in 2030 and beyond, providing that the fuels are produced on an industrial scale. Even if there are 10 million electric vehicles on Germany’s roads by 2030, this still leaves another 38 million cars and trucks with combustion engines. Blending would apply in this case to e-diesel and e-gasoline. Could these be manufactured in sufficient quantities and what would be required to achieve this?
The production processes have a number of advantages in this respect. For example, Fischer-Tropsch synthesis can be used to produce climate-neutral hydrocarbons from green hydrogen and CO2 for blending with other types of fuel. I would like to emphasize that the German government and the EU Commission need to take responsibility for establishing the necessary political and regulatory framework to allow the use of synthetic fuels. It is important for us to have ambitious targets for renewable energy in the transport sector and/or the introduction of mandatory blending rates as p
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