Perhaps the most important pilot plant for synthetic fuels, Haru Oni in southern Chile, will start operations at the end of the year. HIF Global has substantially financed and driven the project. Thorsten Herdan sees Haru Oni primarily as a learning project – for the next stages of expansion. He speaks of further production plants in Chile, Australia and the USA, ranging from 300 megawatts to 2 gigawatts. Haru Oni produces petrol that Porsche will buy to make available to its customers. So that Porsche drivers can continue to drive their vehicles with combustion engines in a climate-neutral way in the future. Thorsten Herdan is correspondingly critical of the discussion in Europe to phase out the internal combustion engine from 2035. It is not the task of the state to dictate to industry which technology it will use to contribute to climate protection. That should be left to the market. Currently, the demand for synthetic fuels is gigantic – but the supply is homoeopathically small. For Thorsten Herdan, it is crucial to manage the ramp-up phase of synthetic fuels correctly for all participants in the value chain. To turn price disadvantages at the beginning of the process into advantages in the future when cheap fuels will be sufficiently available.
