← CERAWeek Podcast with Atul Arya
CERAWeek Podcast with Atul Arya
Meg Gentle, HIF Global, on Scaling E-Fuels for Aviation and Heavy Transport
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Foreign.
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Welcome to the Sarawik Podcast where the world's energy leaders and innovators share insights on the future of energy, technology and climate. I am Atul Arya, chief energy strategist at S and P Global. In each episode we dive into the critical issues and bold ideas shaping our energy future. So let's get started. Hi everyone. Welcome back to Cerabic Podcast. I am Atul Arya, chief energy strategist at S and P Global and today we are going to have an interesting conversation about molecules. There is this ongoing debate about molecules versus electrons and we know it's not a choice. We need both of them. And today we have a leading expert whose company is doing electricity a number of interesting things to make, I would say, low carbon or carbon free molecules. I have joining me, Meg Gentle, executive director for HRF Global. Meg, welcome to sarawik podcast.
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Thank you, Atul. It's a pleasure to be with you today.
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Meg, let's start from the beginning. Give us an introduction to HIF Global. What is your business?
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So we are an efuels company. That means we produce low carbon fuels, which you said, and they're drop in ready to be used by existing infrastructure. So the fuel that we produce today is identical to gasoline that you can put in your car if you still drive a car that uses gasoline. And in fact we sell that to Porsche and Porsche has been using it in the super cup races in Europe for the last couple years. So we have succeeded together in reducing the CO2 emissions from the super cup races to near zero.
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Yeah. Meghan, one of the things you're implying is liquid fuels. So it's very easy, right, to use the existing infrastructure. Existing cars you don't have to create sort of new completely go from the bottom up, isn't it? That's a huge attribute to liquid fuels.
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Yeah, it's so important a tool to really leverage all of our existing infrastructure in the world. And while parts of the economy are turning over, other parts of the economy have to be able to use existing ships, pipelines, distribution systems. And so that's where carbon neutral or low carbon molecules can really have such an impact. Where we can use the existing delivery systems to bring low carbon and decarbonization to the infrastructure that we use today. So it makes a minimal change in impact on consumers.
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I started my podcast today by talking about molecules versus electrons. But both have a place in the future of energy mix, correct? What do you think?
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Yes, I think we need everything, especially what's happening now with an incredible increase in need for energy to supply the lower income parts of the world that are requiring more energy. And also all of the AI expansion and data centers. So a doubling of energy requirements. And the beauty with combining electrons and molecules, it doesn't have to be one solution or the other. It's as much energy as we can supply the economy together. And there are cases where electrons are Perfect to reduce CO2 emissions, bring new energy sources. And then there are other times where there are electrons available in the world, but they're not actually near population. And this is actually why we started in Chile, because we're in the southern part of Chile, right on the Straits of Magellan in Patagonia. And that is a place where there's the best wind resource in the world. So we can use a lot of renewable electricity made from wind, but there's not very many people living there and not a lot of industry that can use it. And so we use that electricity to separate hydrogen from water and then attach the hydrogen to recycled molecules of CO2 that we collect and bring to the facility. And then we've created now from the electricity, the air and the water, a molecule that is gasoline. So we've basically made gasoline from air and water.
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I was going to ask you this question about E fuels. Why are they important? What are they? So you've given us a little bit of a definition of it. How did the word E fuel come about this? Because you're taking electricity and converting into. Or electrons and converting into molecules.
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That's exactly right. That's where the E comes from. Meaning that we are using electricity or using electrons to transform water and air into liquid fuels. And then those liquid fuels, they can go onto ships that we use today, airplanes that we use today. They are chemically equivalent to hydrocarbons that we use. So sometimes we call them synthetic hydrocarbons. And they can be blended straight into the distribution systems.
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And do you need any kind of certification or any approvals or. It's pretty straightforward.
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Each time we envision a facility, we need the approvals to do the construction. And it's very important to us that we build projects in communities that want us to be there and that form a partnership with us and own the project as part of their community family. And then in terms of the certification of the fuel itself, it's obviously checked for all of the safety standards that are required, the same as any, you know, gasoline or shipping fuel or aviation fuel would be. And then we actually get additional certifications to show that on a life cycle basis, it has very low carbine Emissions. And one great example of that is that the facility in Chile was the first facility outside Europe to receive what's called ISCC certification and the first one outside of Europe to get the very cleanest standard for a renewable fuel of non biological origin or RFNBO production facility.
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Yeah, that's great. So what about the cost today? Is there a cost premium and how long before you see the premium coming down?
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So there is still a cost premium. Many people talk about E fuels being more expensive than fossil fuels. That is true. Part of it is because today we're producing E fuels from pretty small production facilities. So as the market is growing and we're able to build larger and larger facilities, we'll have that cost coming down. And the second major way will be that we are blending the fuel into existing fossil fuels because there's almost zero carbon intensity score, so almost zero grams of CO2 in the fuel. When we blend it with existing fuels, we can reduce the overall emissions of the fuel by a lot with just a very small amount of E fuels. So as we start worldwide adopting blending and copying, maybe some of the blending mandate kind of philosophy that we've seen with biofuels and ethanol, then that brings the blended cost of the fuel down.
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Let's talk about your project. So you mentioned your project in Chile. Give us a little bit more of a idea of what it is and then other projects you're doing around the world.
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So in Chile today we produce methanol, E methanol and E gasoline and we sell the production to Porsche and a little bit actually goes to a company called Antarctica 21 that takes tourists to Antarctica. And we had a little bit also be tested by the Chilean Navy. What we're building from everything that we're learning there, we can expand in Chile, but we also have sites in several places in the world so that we have a geographic portfolio that can withstand the changes that we see in different regions on policy and acceptability. And then we're also building the portfolio of fuels that we can supply to and the supply chains that supply those fuels. So we talked earlier about Porsche for road transport. Last year we had three investors from Japan join our shareholder group, Idemitsu, Mol and Jogmac, that really became the supply chain distribution line for maritime fuel. And so we tested that a little bit with Antarctica 21. Now we know HIF can produce methanol, MOL can transport it, Idemitsu can consume it or turn it into another fuel in Japan. And the third piece of that sort of product portfolio is being able to produce sustainable aviation fuel. And so that's what we're developing next.
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And what about your projects in the US for example?
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Yes, so Chile, Uruguay, Brazil, usa, We have a site also in Tasmania and some other projects that we are working together with the ports in Morocco, Oman and India. So we're trying to have a pipeline of opportunities in places where we can readily access both the local market and the international market.
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And you said you are using in Chile wind. What other types of fuel sources are you using around the world?
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Yes, that's a great question because as you would imagine, each site is specific to the local area. And so for example, in Brazil and Uruguay we have better access to a grid that is already producing high percentage of renewable because there's a lot of hydro.
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Yeah.
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In the US we chose a site in Texas that is adjacent to a nuclear facility. It also can be connected to grid power. And that grid power can have power purchase agreements with wind and solar producers. And so we have to understand, okay, what is the resource in that area. And there are some places in the world where there's a perfect capacity balance where we have wind blowing certain hours and solar and other hours. And so we can get a nice production profile.
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And I read that you're also doing some direct air capture or capturing carbon. Tell us about that. What is that?
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Yes, very exciting. We're testing a direct air capture facility in two places actually. In the plant in Chile and in the lab in Frankfurt. And to make these E fuels, we take the hydrogen from the water, but then we have to capture CO2 molecules from somewhere and bring them to the plant. And so those can come from lots of places, either from facilities today that have emissions. Let's capture that and reuse it rather than let it stay out there. Or from plant sources so that's fully biogenic, or from direct air capture, meaning that the air comes through the facility and what's naturally in the air as CO2 sticks to a sorbent and we can capture only the CO2 molecules. And so this is a new technology. Many companies are testing slightly different configurations of direct air capture. And somewhere here we're going to have a breakthrough and be able then to site the plant where the best electricity source is and do the carbon capture without needing an external feedstock.
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So that would be like an end to end. Right. You have clean energy coming in, you have CO2 captured from somewhere, combining it with your hydrogen. So you can make a really completely end to end clean fuel issue.
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Exactly.
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What about the policy landscape now? Are you looking for things from the policymakers which will accelerate the whole issue growth?
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I think we'd need two big global ideas from policymakers, and one is to arrive at a global carbon accounting system. Each region or country can have different policies on what they accept, what they want to incentivize. But we should all be counting how much CO2 is in all of our activities on the same basis. Just companies have standards for reporting their financials. We need a standard way of counting the grams of CO2 inherent in our different fuels and energy sources. And then the second major thing that we really have to get comfortable with in the world is mass balancing and book and claim. And when I say that, what I mean is we have to accept for molecules the same thing that we do today for electricity, which is, if I'm making wind power and putting it onto a grid, I can sell my wind power to you at your house and you get the environmental benefit of buying that clean power. But when the electron goes onto the grid, it's on the grid and it goes wherever it goes, and you get something from the grid into your house and everybody accepts that you bought that green power. And we have to get to that same system for molecules. And this will actually be another great cost reducer. A big part of our cost today is transporting fuel all the way from Chile to Porsche in Europe. If we worked the same as electricity, we could sell Porsche the fuel, but they would know that they have the environmental benefit. We actually put the gasoline into the market in chile. And since CO2 emissions are a global challenge, not a local challenge, they don't like dirty the air, they just create an overall warming. The mass balancing still puts clean fuels into our atmosphere and that is what we need to happen.
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Are you hoping this will happen? And in terms of the structure, so you can be like a fungible fuel?
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Right.
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You do it here, but get the credit somewhere else.
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Yes. More and more carbon markets are developing little by little that do accept mass balance, which is either physically, it could be connected or a booking claim, which is it couldn't be physically connected, but we're going to accept it because it's a certified project. And so I am hopeful in this decade that we are all working on reducing cog emissions, that we will accept mass balancing with the right kinds of certifications to make sure that people aren't taking advantage.
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Yeah, exactly. It's working in the power. So it can happen in other places as well, isn't it?
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Exactly.
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I want to ask you a little bit about the carbon Accounting point you just made, Meg. So I know there are new initiatives now coming up. Are you joining any of those to get a better handle on this accounting issue?
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We are trying to support as many groups are working on carbon accounting. There have been a few important coalitions in the US and in Europe. And we're trying to give meaningful feedback what is required to have standards that are reliable and give certainty so that people can make investments. And I think that's really the key of where sometimes missing is to make investments. We just need certainty and then decisions can get made and we drive solutions to that certainty.
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Yeah, it's like financial accounting, because when we read a P and L statement, profit and loss today from company A or company B, we know it's all based on same standards, but we can't do the same for carbon today. That's the challenge.
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You have to get to that point.
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Let's talk about your alliances and partnerships. You mentioned Porsche, but what about others? Give us a flavor of your thinking of these partners.
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Yeah, the partnerships are so important because we have to build the whole value chain. Right. And our specialty is developing the project and then building and operating the facility. We don't have the sort of integrated major energy company reach. So for us to build that value chain that's needed, we are bringing partners that will work together with us so that we can deliver across the ocean and attract the last mile customer. And one great example of that is that to produce sustainable aviation fuel, we can do that from the methanol that we make at the facility so we can be the wholesale methanol producer. And then we deliver that methanol to a refinery. And the refinery already has a lot of all the distribution systems needed, so they can do the next round of synthesis to make sustainable aviation fuel. And then they're in many cases already connected to the airport. So the fuel just goes straight on our existing infrastructure. That's the next step of building these value chains that we'll do hopefully with our Japanese partners and with some new partners that we're working with in Europe.
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B
Oh, excellent. So what are you hoping to do at Sarawik? What kind of conversations? Or maybe some new partnerships at Sarawik?
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We at Saraweek this year are really focusing on that aviation fuel value chain. And from really three aspects, I think. One is delivering methanol to a refinery like we just talked about. Second would be taking more biogas and making sustainable aviation fuel from that, which could potentially have even better than zero CI score, carbon intensity score, because capturing a biogas is a lot more beneficial than capturing a CO2.
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Yeah. Because it has methane in it, which has global warming potential. Yeah.
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Now, if we can use that to make sustainable aviation fuel, all the better. And then we've got some places where we're considering like wood waste that just biogenic waste that can also get made into a sustainable aviation fuel for some key like airport loading systems around the world. So Sierra Week this year is going to be a really exciting place to bring that like ecosystem of technology companies, end users that maybe don't always purchase fuel, sometimes they purchase environmental benefit. And we can bring this conversation together about E fuels, renewable fuels, sustainable aviation fuel and book and claim and how we can really expand the supply base for saf.
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Saf bigger opportunity in Europe around the world. That's the number one location.
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The European market has the clearest rules governing what is needed there for saf. So it is the most advanced market. And as once it's aviation fuel, it's jet fuel, is jet fuel and it has to meet the standards of jet fuel for safety and blending. And so ultimately the big markets where everybody's flying, those are the biggest markets for jet fuel. And so as we work on that, like where we started at the beginning, when are we competitive on cost, we have the most support from the European market. But we definitely know there's a need for jet fuel everywhere in the world. And the opportunity there is that airplanes have very few alternatives. They have to have jet fuel. Whether it's fossil fuel, jet fuel, or a synthetic kind of jet fuel blended together, they can't really change to electrification. So there's another great example of how let's use electricity where it's good and let's use molecules to decarbonize where electricity cannot be used.
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My last question to you, you said earlier, Meg, that you're supplying fuel to Antarctica. 21. So have you been on one of their boats and gone to Antarctica as
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part of that at all? But I have to say you are invited to come to Magallanes and see the facility. And I'll extend that invitation to all of your podcast viewers. We welcome you at the HIF Haruoni facility. It's been operating since 2022, and if we can get enough coordination, we could get people out on Antarctica.
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21 Some of my audience knows this, Meg, that I went to Antarctica about 15 years back now, actually on a science expedition, flew into Ushuaia, which is not that far, in Tierra del Fuego, and then from there to Antarctica. So, well, thank you for that. Invitation. I hope I can get down to Chile one of these days. And thank you for this podcast. We look forward to seeing you at Sarah Week in a few weeks.
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Likewise. Thank you for having me on the show and hopefully we sparked some ideas for great Sarah Week conversations.
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Thank you. Thank you for joining us on the Sarah Week Podcast to stay connected with the ideas driving change across energy and technology. Subscribe, share and rate this episode. It helps us get the word out. Let's continue having impactful conversations. Hello, I'm Atul Arya. Until the next time, the saraweek Podcast
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with Atul Arya is brought to you by saraweek, the world's premier energy conference. Be part of the conversations moving the world of Energy Forward, March 23, 27, 2026 in Houston. Discover more@saraweek.com.