The trend towards renewable energy sources will continue under the pre-amble of greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reduction targets. The main question is how to harvest and store renewable energy properly.
The challenge of intermittency of the renewable energy resources make the supply less predictable compared to the traditional energy sources. Chemical energy carriers like hydrogen and synthetic fuels (e-Fuels) seem to be at least a part of the solution for storing renewable energy.
The usage of e-Fuels in the existing ICE-powered vehicle fleet has a big lever arm to reduce the GHG emissions of the transport sector in the short- and medium term.
The paper covers the whole well-to-wheel (WtW) pathway by discussing the e-Fuel production from renewable sources, the storage and the usage in the vehicle. It will be summarized by scenarios on the impact of e-Fuel to the WtW CO2 fleet emissions.
The pathway of renewable chemical energy carriers shows a positive impact to the well-to-wheel CO2 fleet average in the long-term.