Motor Mouth: Can gasoline save our planet?

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Could Porsche have found the Holy Grail of gasoline, the Hail Mary of hydrocarbons, if you will? In a process that sounds more complicated than it really is, Porsche says it has found a way to use windmills to electrolyze water in oxygen and hydrogen, scrub carbon dioxide from the air, combine the two into methanol and then, in one final emissions-free c oup de grâce , reformulate the whole shooting match into gasoline.

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And not some rare form of toluene or some other Formula One-like carcinogen that will turn your future kids into mutant ninja turtles. Nope, just plain ol’ ordinary gas that can power any internal combustion engine, can be blended with ordinary pump gas, and in the ultimate of technological ironies, can also be blended with ethanol. Best of all, because every carbon molecule of the 92 octane that flows out of this MTG (methanol-to-gas) reaction was previously filtered from the air, it’s carbon neutral. It’s even low in benzene and almost completely devoid of sulfur.

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Motor Mouth: Can gasoline save our planet? Back to video

It all sounds a little fantastical, doesn’t it? Plucking carbon dioxide from the air. Windmills. Electrolyzing water into hydrogen. Turning methanol into, not mere gasoline additive, but gasoline itself. But despite sounding like a plot from Star Trek , it’s all been done before, albeit not with the efficiency nor the total dedication to emissions reduction that Porsche, along with partners Siemens and ExxonMobil, has brought to the table.

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Capturing carbon dioxide from air is nothing new. From the crude “scrubbers” that attempt to filter CO ₂ out of combustion in industrial plants to the ingenious battery-like device MIT recently announced that could work even in the roughly 400 parts per million currently found in the atmosphere, the technology exists, albeit not yet on a scale large enough to make a significant impact. Ditto, of course, the electrolytic separation of water — H ₂ O — into oxygen and hydrogen; we all did that in our high school chemistry labs. Methanol-to-gas reduction is ages old as well, ExxonMobil patented the process way back in 1975 — by mistake, by the way — and built its first working plant in 1979. In fact, by the mid-1980s, incentivized by a second debilitating oil crisis, New Zealand produced fully one third of all its gasoline from an ExxonMobil methanol-to-gas facility that was only shut down in 1996, when the threat of oil shortages had become a distant memory.

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The difference is how Porsche, Siemens, and Exxon have brought all these processes together. Previous MTG plants used steam-reformed natural gas as their source for methanol because, well, it was cheap. But it wasn’t carbon neutral. Producing it from scrubbed CO ₂ and electrolyzed hydrogen is, though, but both those processes are extremely energy intensive. Hence why Porsche’s new “Haru Oni” pilot project is in Chile. Southern Chile — more specifically, in the Magallanes region — which Dr. Michael Steiner, member of Porsche’s executive board in charge of research and development, says was chosen because it boasts the highest average wind speeds in the world, the better to drive the windmills needed to produce all that emissions-free electricity reliably and (relatively) cheaply.

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Not surprising, however, is that this synthetic gasoline remains more expensive than the traditional fossil fuel. The complicated chemistry, emissions-free electricity, and shipping — also to be carbon-reduced, claims Steiner — is going to be more difficult to expand to the economies of scale that make production of gas from crude oil so very, very cost effective.

Initial production will be limited to 130,000 litres per year, enough, says Porsche, to fuel its motorsport activities and Porsche Experience Centres. As production ramps up — first to 55 million litres per year by 2024 and then to 550 million litres in 2026 — the e-fuels will also become the “first fill” of all the cars coming off Porsche production lines that are still powered by internal combustion. Eventually, says Steiner, Porsche’s target price for e-fuel will be the same one to two euros (CAD $1.50 to $3) per litre that Europeans currently pay at the pumps.

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That is, however, without taxes. And therein, to quote the bard, lies the rub. How synthetic fuel is treated by various jurisdictions will very much dictate whether carbon-neutral gasoline remains a boutique industry or a serious weapon in our efforts to reduce tailpipe emissions. Should “e-gas” be taxed as regular gasoline since, viewed in isolation, it still produces carbon dioxide when it is internally combusted? Or should it be exempt from such tariffs because of its net-zero emissions? Unfortunately, like so many of today’s technologies, I think politics will play a larger part than science in this decision-making process.

In a worst-case scenario — i.e., e-gas is taxed at the same level as traditional gasoline — Porsche’s process is a lifeline to the classic car owners of the future. With progressives pushing aggressively for the demise of internal combustion, it’s hard to not think a ban on the sale of gasoline might not be far behind, especially when they see the efforts naysayers are willing to go to keep their aging ICEs roadworthy. Gasoline reformulated from carbon dioxide scrubbed from the atmosphere, however, would (hopefully) be the exception. It might well prove the salvation for those owning ’57 Chevys, pre-war Rolls-Royces (an incredible 65 per cent of all the Rolls produced since 1906 are still on the road) and even modern touring motorcycles (diabolically hard to electrify).

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How synthetic fuel is treated ... will dictate whether carbon-neutral gasoline remains a boutique industry or a serious weapon.

If synthetic e-gas was to get favourable tax treatment, though, plug-in hybrids might well be transformed from merely transitional technology to a viable long-term alternative to purely battery-powered vehicles. While BEVs would still be cheaper to operate and convenient for urban use, PHEVs would now become a practical, carbon-zero surrogate for the long-distance road warrior.

Indeed, they could happily co-exist at the roadside service stations of the future, the ADHD-afflicted — like Yours Truly — paying extra for the convenience of a two-minute, e-gas fill-up while BEV advocates (who will no doubt announce themselves by loudly proclaiming their disdain for all things gasoline in the comment section below) could choose to spend less for a (much) longer direct-from-the-grid recharge. Whatever the choice, both would be secure in the knowledge their carbon footprint has been eliminated — or at least neutralized.

In the more immediate future, though, if Steiner’s plan bears fruit, it means that every gram of carbon your high-revving 911 Turbo emits could be captured, transformed and refined, and then end up right back in your Porsche’s gas tank. That, my friends, is guilt-free gasoline.