Energy carriers for transport: Produced overseas and transported to Germany

The low electricity utilisation efficiency of synthetic fuels (so-called e-fuels) in combustion engines can be partially absorbed economically by producing electricity in parts of the world with particularly favourable meteorological conditions, converting it into liquid e-fuels and supplying those e-fuels to car tanks at low cost using existing transportation infrastructure that is already largely in place.Three different scenarios will be examined in this paper: wind power is used to produce hydrogen, methanol, gasoline and diesel in Chile. Those e-fuels are then brought to Germany. The first scenario considers hydrogen supplied to fuel cell vehicles at newly built filling stations. In the second scenario, gasoline, diesel and methanol are supplied to cars with internal combustion engines at existing filling stations. In the third scenario, electric vehicles are powered by wind or PV power from Germany. These three scenarios will be compared to each other in terms of their respective costs. As evaluation basis, the specific energy costs up to the tank and the energy costs per kilometre driven will be used.Cost calculations based on process simulations show that the specific energy costs of e-fuels from Chile are lower than the specific energy costs of German wind and PV power when the transportation and distribution costs of the electricity are taken into account. However, the costs per kilometre driven are still higher for the e-fuels due to their lower efficiency compared to pure battery vehicles when used in fuel cells or internal combustion engines. That conclusion could alter, though, if the costs, as of yet unknown, of building an electricity grid that only supplies electricity from renewable energy sources were taken into account.