How diesel disappears from the showroom – Part 3

At the end of last year, the hashtag #tenyearsleft was circulated on Twitter among petrolheads from the United Kingdom. The tag was created in response to the ambition announced by the British government at the time for a future in which only zero-emission cars are sold. Just like in the Netherlands, that future must start in 2030. That ambition does not make our country or the United Kingdom unique. Dozens of countries worldwide want, whether or not a few years later or even earlier, that only new cars will roll out of the showrooms that do not burn fossil fuels. To achieve this, our government – ​​and that of the British – is pushing for the implementation of electric driving as an alternative. #tenyearsleft therefore refers to the last decade of the combustion engine. A little later, CAR Magazine, which is leading across the North Sea, published a hymn to the combustion engine, entitled ‘The End of Engines’, in which it states that the combustion engine can count down its days.

Another alternative

The Climate Act entails CO2 targets that set limits on our emissions. To achieve these goals, it is important to use less oil, coal and gas. After all, those fossil fuels retain a lot of CO2, which ends up in the atmosphere when burned. In this way they contribute to the greenhouse effect. But whether an end to the use of fossil fuels also means the end of roaring engines?

That remains to be seen. Combustion engines can also run on renewable fuels, many of which are currently under development. “Although the biggest threat to this development is a different legislation,” says Bart Somers, professor at Eindhoven University of Technology. “Liquid fuels always need a CO2 source. Because the CO2 emissions of cars are now measured at the rear bumper, there is no incentive for the car industry (which is supposed to build emission-free cars, ed.) to get started with alternative fuels.” It is not the case that a car that runs on renewable fuels has no CO2 emissions. The crux lies in the origin of that CO2. Where the high concentration of carbon dioxide in oil or gas took millions of years to be stored, the sources for renewable fuels are – you guessed it – renewable.

Immediately applicable

The main raw material for renewable fuels is vegetable material. For petrol engines, bioethanol, the namesake of the E10 petrol, which has been in use since 1 October 2019, offers a way to reduce the CO2 intensity of combustion engines. If you look at diesel, the less well-known hydrotreated vegetable oil (HVO) is currently the most relevant development. A major advantage of the latter is that it has a similar chemical composition to conventional diesel. This makes it easy to use in current engines. Higher concentrations of bioethanol cannot simply be used in an unmodified petrol engine. The fuel system has to be changed to withstand the stuff, which is happening more and more in France with the availability of cheap E85 petrol with up to 85 percent ethanol.

Although bioethanol is less easily applicable than HVO, it is more common. In the Netherlands, Euro 95 consists of a maximum of 10 percent of the alcohol. In many other countries, such as Germany and France, Euro 95-E10 has been available on a larger scale for some time. This is because the infrastructure for its production has been under development for some time. To make HVO a generally available product in our country, the availability of the necessary plant material must first increase.

food versus fuel

The crops needed for the production of renewable fuels – as well as the land needed to grow them – have other uses as well. For example, everyone now agrees that it is undesirable to cut down jungle to make way for the production of palm oil. In addition, it is debatable whether to use edible crops for fuel production while elsewhere there are food shortages. To regulate the sources of renewable fuels, the EU therefore drafted the RED, the Renewable Energy Directive. This guideline must guarantee that a fuel such as HVO can exist in a responsible manner. However, a large-scale implementation is still relatively far away. That too has partly to do with the European emission measurement method on the rear bumper: this offers the industry little reason to get involved. That’s a shame, because HVO provides a solid perspective for the diesel engine – and it’s already quite ‘green’ at the moment, we concluded last week. Its fine and nitrogen production is limited and so are CO2 emissions. However, only the electric car currently benefits from tax incentives.

Future of refueling

“However, the question is whether you will achieve the CO2 targets with electrification alone. I do not think so; both more sustainable fuels and electric driving are needed,” says Tim Schoenmakers on behalf of BETA, the interest group for gas stations. “But I don’t think that penny will fall to policymakers until we reach the limits of electrification. You will find it under the loading capacity. If many more electric cars are added, the energy grid will have to be considerably upgraded. That is still quite a challenge.” Whatever cars will drive in the future, Schoenmakers is not afraid of the continued existence of gas stations. “Many gas stations originally sold coal. People took it with them by horse and cart to heat their houses. Later that became fuel oil and later petrol, diesel and LPG. What has always remained is that we have to stop in an accessible place for energy. The gas station does change with the demand.” It is expected that (renewable) fuels for cars with combustion engines will be available for decades to come. Schoenmakers: “New cars with a combustion engine will be for sale until 2030 at least. They have been on the road for an average of more than fifteen years, so petrol and diesel will in any case still be readily available until 2045.”

So take the hashtag #tenyearsleft with a grain of salt. Although manufacturers such as Jaguar and Fiat aspire to soon produce only EVs, Mercedes is championing a future for the diesel engine and Porsche is building a factory for synthetic fuels in Chile. Whether that also means that combustion engines will remain available is another matter, but refueling with existing ones will in any case remain possible for a long time to come. The petrolhead can breathe a sigh of relief: plenty of years left.

Fuel of the future

In the long term, synthetic petrol and diesel could be the replacements for fossil fuels. Its production – and that of the hydrogen required for this – costs a relatively large amount of electricity. That is why a surplus of green energy is a must. Now the increasing amount of captured wind and solar power is an inconsistent supplier of energy: sometimes it delivers more, sometimes less. The energy left over on days with a lot of sun and wind can soon be used to make synthetic fuel. CO2 is the only other thing it takes. The industry wants to capture this in the atmosphere by the time the sustainable energy supply is large enough. The technology for this is under development.

“Moreover”, says Professor Bart Somers, “this could be a business case for countries around the equator. There, solar panels yield much more than here. If you had solar parks there with synthetic fuel factories next to them, you would get a kind of OPEC (Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries; ed.) but for green energy.”

According to former Formula E world champion Lucas di Grassi, e-fuels, as synthetic fuels are also called, are an excellent opportunity for Formula 1. After all, this racing class has already helped road traffic with novelties before. “Spend development budgets on developing clean, cheap e-fuels,” he tweeted. “Batteries are for Formula E. E-fuels can ensure a return of V8 and V10 engines in Formula 1 and contribute to the sport’s desire to be emission-free.”