Haru Oni, the world’s first comprehensive carbon-neutral synthetic fuel plant, has officially started production recently. The plant, located near the city of Punta Arenas in southern Chile, uses wind energy, water, and carbon dioxide to synthesize e-methanol, which is then converted into carbon-neutral e-fuel (eFuel). Siemens Energy designed and worked with Porsche and various partners to complete the plant’s system integration solution. The official commissioning of electric synthetic fuels marks a key step in the decarbonization of the transportation industry, which is even more significant for the shipping and aviation industries that are difficult or impossible to electrify, or the traditional automobile industry that still uses internal combustion engines.
Anne Laure de Chammard, Member of the Executive Board of Siemens Energy AG, said: “The Haru Oni project demonstrates that electrosynthetic fuels can be produced in large quantities and at a competitive price. The transport industry is a key factor in achieving climate goals. At the same time, the experience gained through this project will also help us develop applications for other fields.”
The Haru Oni pilot plant is located in the province of Magellan in the Patagonia region of southern Chile. It is scheduled to be completed in March 2023, and the project construction period is less than two years. Siemens Energy played an important role in the design process of this lighthouse project as co-developer and system integrator. Hydrogen, which is an important basis for the fuel synthesis process, is produced by electrolyzers provided by Siemens Energy, and Siemens Gamesa is responsible for providing wind turbines. The biggest challenge of this project is to integrate the independent links in the previous production process of electric synthetic fuel to form a complete production process, and realize efficient and smooth coordinated scheduling for the first time, thus laying the foundation for the increase of electric synthetic fuel production capacity. The plant is expected to have an annual production capacity of around 130,000 liters by 2023. After the pilot is completed, the factory will continue to expand its production capacity in two stages: around 2025, the annual production capacity is planned to expand to about 55 million liters, and to continue to expand to about 550 million liters two years later.
The Haru Oni project harnesses the enormous potential of renewable energy in the Patagonian region to advance the hydrogen economy and in turn contribute to the energy transition in Europe and globally. This area has abundant wind power and can provide up to 6,000 hours of full-load green power generation time per year, which is three times that of Europe. Wind energy will be stored in liquid form through power-to-X, because liquid energy storage can be more easily transported from regions rich in renewable energy to regions where energy is scarce. The Haru Oni project was groundbreaking and provided references all over the world. The project is supported by the German Federal Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate Protection: In 2020, Haru Oni became the first hydrogen energy project to receive funding from the German National Hydrogen Strategy.
The project is the first solution to apply for the clean energy certification jointly established by TÜV SÜD, the German Energy Agency (DENA) and Siemens Energy. This certification adopts digital certificate anti-counterfeiting identification technology to track and verify the “green” process of products and provide certification. To obtain a certificate for a product, it needs to record its carbon footprint in the entire production chain. For electric synthetic fuels, it is a green certification system for the complete process from wind power generation to vehicle refueling. The electro-synthetic fuel produced at the Haru Oni plant is certified to comply with EU standards for sustainable fuels.
