The ongoing climate crisis has forced us to scrutinize the transportation industry for its reliance on fossil fuels. However, Canadian clean energy company Huron Clean Energy in British Colombia and its partner Carbon Engineering Ltd. are engineering a game-changing fuel made out of the air for road vehicles, ships, and planes.
The revolutionary, large-scale commercial facility in Canada that will be used to produce this usable fuel is powered by clean hydroelectricity and utilizes Carbon Engineering’s cutting-edge Direct Air Capture and AIR TO FUELS™ technologies to electrolyze water, splitting it into hydrogen and oxygen, as reported by CTV News. Then, the hydrogen will be mixed with carbon dioxide sequestered from the air to produce hydrocarbons that can replace traditional petroleum-based fuels.
Huron Clean Energy calls their innovation “clean fuel” on their website, which has the additional benefit of using Carbon Engineering’s signature carbon sequestration technology at the “megaton-scale” to help remove carbon dioxide from the air.
“Unlike capturing emissions from industrial flue stacks, our carbon removal technology captures carbon dioxide (CO2)—the primary greenhouse gas responsible for climate change—directly out of the air around us,” reads the company website. “This can help counteract today’s unavoidable CO2 emissions and remove the large quantities of CO2 emitted in the past that remains trapped in our atmosphere.”
According to Gasworld, the fuel synthesis facility will be able to produce up to 100 million liters of ultra-low carbon fuel annually. When the renewable and “near carbon-neutral” energy source is burned, it will produce up to 90 percent fewer emissions than conventional hydrocarbons and can be used to replace fuel completely or as an ingredient in fuel blends.
Plus, the use of this renewable fuel doesn’t require any modifications to be made to existing airplanes, ships, trucks, or cars. Globe Newswire praises this fuel solution for providing “a pathway to significantly reduce transportation emissions,” and for also offering clean liquid energy for transport sectors that are challenging to electrify.
Construction on the facility is set to start in 2023, with operations targeted to begin approximately three years later with the support of British Columbia’s government which is contributing $2 million in funding towards the preliminary engineering and design of the facility.
