Porsche and Siemens Energy have joined forces with a number of international companies to build an industrial plant for the production of nearly CO₂-neutral fuel (eFuel) in Punta Arenas, Chile. A pilot plant is initially being built north of Punta Arenas in Chilean Patagonia, which is expected to produce around 130,000 liters of eFuels in 2022.

Rendering of the pilot plant on the site.

The capacity will then be expanded in two stages to around 55 million liters by 2024 and to around 550 million liters by 2026. The necessary environmental permits have now been obtained by the Chilean project company Highly Innovative Fuels (HIF). Siemens Energy has also already started preparatory work for the next major commercial phase of the project.

I’m pleased that we’re making progress on this international lighthouse project for the hydrogen economy together with strong international partners from business and politics. With Haru Oni, we’re bringing our power-to-X technologies to the global market. We’re jointly developing and realising the world’s first integrated and commercial large-scale plant for producing synthetic, climate-neutral fuels. In southern Chile, we’re implementing one of the energy industry’s most exciting projects for the future and driving forward the decarbonisation of the mobility sector. It means we’re making an important and rapidly effective contribution to reducing CO₂-emissions in the traffic and transport sector.

—Armin Schnettler, EVP for New Energy Business at Siemens Energy

The sports car manufacturer Porsche initiated the demonstration project and will be using the eFuels in its own combustion engine vehicles.

Our tests with renewable fuels are going very successfully. eFuels will make it possible to reduce fossil CO₂-emissions in combustion engines by up to 90 percent. Among other things, we’ll be using the first fuel from Chile in our Porsche Mobil 1 Supercup race cars from 2022.

—Michael Steiner, Member of the Executive Board for Research and Development at Porsche AG

Chile has set itself ambitious targets as part of its National Green Hydrogen Strategy. It plans an electrolyzer capacity of 5 gigawatts (GW) by 2025, rising to 25 GW by 2030. The aim is to produce the world’s cheapest hydrogen and develop the country into a leading exporter of green hydrogen and its derivatives.

The Haru Oni project takes advantage of the perfect climatic conditions for wind energy in Magallanes province in southern Chile to produce the virtually CO₂-neutral fuel using low-cost green wind power.

In the first step, electrolyzers split water into oxygen and green hydrogen using wind power. CO₂ is then filtered from the air and combined with the green hydrogen to produce synthetic methanol, which in turn is converted into eFuel. The pilot plant is scheduled to start production in mid-2022. In addition to Siemens Energy, Porsche and HIF, Enel, ExxonMobil, Gasco and ENAP are participating in the Haru Oni project.