E-Fuels company HIF Global, together with partners, authorities, and community representatives, celebrated the production of the first liters of synthetic gasoline at the Haru Oni Demonstration Plant in southern Chile. (Earlier post.)

Haru Oni Demonstration Plant

Chile’s Minister of Energy, Diego Pardow, headed the ceremony where a Porsche 911 was loaded with synthetic fuel. Porsche, one of the partners, contributed with research and an offtake agreement to purchase Haru Oni eGasoline for lighthouse projects such the Porsche Mobil 1 Supercup and the Porsche Experience Centers.

We are very interested in importing climate-friendly hydrogen derivatives and fuels. The demand is enormous—especially in the fields of aviation and shipping, but also to decarbonize existing vehicle fleets. The Chilean-German energy partnership launched in 2019 offers great potential to cooperate on climate protection and the indispensable transformation of the fuel industry. We firmly support this groundbreaking project.

—Winfried Hermann, Minister of Transport of the State of Baden-Württemberg

Haru Oni will produce green hydrogen via electrolysis using renewable energy from the wind. The facility will also capture CO₂ from the atmosphere and use a process of synthesis to combine the CO₂ and hydrogen to produce eFuels, including carbon-neutral methanol (eMethanol); carbon-neutral gasoline (eGasoline); and carbon-neutral Liquefied Gas (eLG).

In this first stage, Porsche will use the eFuel for its Porsche Experience Centers and the Porsche Mobil 1 Super Cup. Haru Oni will produce 350 tons per year of eMethanol and 130,000 liters per year of eGasoline. The facility expects to start commercial operations in March 2023.

HIF Global is the owner and lead developer of Haru Oni and has been conducting studies to develop eFuels projects in Magallanes for eight years.Other partners include:

• Enel Green Power is a partner in the wind power generation and green hydrogen production.

• ENAP, the Chilean state-owned energy company, supports with infrastructure and logistics.

• Siemens Energy is responsible for the plant design, technology integration, and supplies its electrolyzer and the wind turbine from Siemens Gamesa.

• Empresas Gasco provides research and development for the production of synthetic gas.

• ExxonMobil provides the plant with methanol-to-gasoline (MtG) technology.

The potential of eFuels is huge. There are more than 1.3 billion vehicles with combustion engines in the world today. Many of them will still be on the road for decades. We must also offer the owners of existing vehicles a perspective. As a manufacturer of high-performance and efficient engines, Porsche has extensive know-how in the field of fuels. We can thus exert a significant influence on the development of synthetic fuels.

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