The sixth episode of our podcast series is a conversation with Ralf Diemer, Managing Director of the E-fuel Alliance at the end of January 2024.

Ralf Diemer outlined the benefits of using e-fuels for reaching the European Union (EU) decarbonisation goals. He explained that all combustion technologies can run on e-fuels and directly reduce CO2 emissions. Their advantage is the direct usability without the need for massive investments in infrastructure, and without having to change existing fleets. The discussion covered EU regulations over the last 5 years and regulatory frameworks in other countries, such as Japan.

The conversation went on about the synergies between e-fuels and biofuels production as well as carbon capture utilization and storage (CCUS) and the projected e-fuels prices in 2030/2032, taking into account that e-fuels will mostly go from small scale to large scale production so the prices should go down.

Ralf Diemer emphasized that 100% e-fuel at the fuel station will not happen on the 2030 horizon, most likely the available solution will be using drop-in fuels, biofuels and e-fuel blends combined, otherwise the price will indeed remain too expensive.

Welcome everyone to the 6th episode of our Inspiring Energy talks dedicated to the exciting topic of e-fuels: all hype or fuel of the future? I'm Claire Couet, I'm a Business Development Manager for SGS INSPIRE, based in Brussels, Belgium, and I will be your podcast host for this episode. So everybody is talking about e-fuels these days, especially in Europe with the new CO2 emission standards for passenger cars that have been adopted at EU level in 2023 and similar ongoing discussions regarding heavy duty vehicles. Some see e-fuels as solutions to decarbonized road transport, others believe that they should be reserved primarily for aviation and shipping. With that in mind, my question to our expert guest speakers today will be the following: can e-fuels really accelerate the decarbonization of the transport sector? And what are the implications of using e-fuels in terms of costs, infrastructure, investments, need for new regulations, etc? My first guest today is Ralf Diemer. Ralf, welcome to our podcast.

Thank you, Claire. Good to be with you.

We're pleased to have you, Ralf. You are the CEO of the eFuel alliance based in Berlin and Brussels. You will tell us more about the alliance in a second. Let me say a few words about your background. So, you have a background in law. You worked in the Baden Württemberg State Parliament, in the European Parliament, and in the German Parliament, as an office manager to a German parliamentary. So we can say that you understand the world of politics and decision making quite well. Then you moved to the German Automotive industry association (VDA), you headed their Brussels office for over 10 years and then their Department for Economic Trade and Climate Protection, back in Berlin. Today I also have a second guest speaker and I'm thrilled to have my colleague Lucky Nurafiatin. Lucky is our Senior Market Analyst for the Asia Pacific region. She's based in Singapore. She is an expert in fuel specifications, vehicle emissions and alternative fuels. So happy to have you here!

Thank you. Thank you, Claire. I'm happy to be here as well.

So, lady and gentleman, let us kick off our conversation by going back a little bit to the basics, if I may say. Ralf, what is the definition of E fuels? What are they really and how are they produced and what are the feedstocks for these e-fuels?

Thank you again for having me. I mean, e-fuels itself are liquid or gases renewable energy. So if you look into the production chain, we need renewable electricity with water, we make hydrogen, and then out of this hydrogen by mostly adding a CO2 source, you can do any derivates and that's then fuel. So that could be gasoline, diesel, kerosene, methanol, ammonium. So basically everything what you what you have now made out of oil or gas, you can do on a renewable basis on hydrogen. So that's how we define e-fuels. In our case, in the case of the eFuel Alliance, since we also have a bunch of very successful biofuel producers, especially biofuels of the last generation, so we think biofuels have to be a part of this picture, for two reasons. First of all, they are available right now. They are produced in huge scales. Lucky is in Singapore and Singapore is a very big refinery for example, from our member Neste doing biofuels. And secondly, they can also be a CO2 source. So biomass, of course, can be a CO2 source also for e-fuels, so that is why those two production lines, if you will, are connected to each other. And, of course both products can and will help to reduce CO2 emissions in all kinds of use cases. So you were you were referring to road transport, but of course this goes for any use case where you have combustion technology in place. All these combustion technologies can be run climate neutral by using different fuels, e-fuels.

Humm, thank you. And you were already saying a few words about your alliance. Maybe you could tell us more about, you know, about your Members, whom you represent?

Yeah. So the eFuel Alliance is a quite young organisation. We were founded in summer 2020. It was originally a German idea. That is why we are located in Berlin. We have now members out of 17 countries in four continents, so it's actually a global, and it's getting more and more, a global organisation. So we have Members in Japan, in the United States ,in South America, and of course in many European countries and Member States of the European Union, and the idea is to have a cross sectoral platform along the whole value chain of e-fuels. So that means our members representing different parts of the value chain of e-fuels, so that that means technology providers, companies like Siemens Energy for example, that is, of course the oil and gas companies like ENI from Italy, REPSOL from Spain. In that respect also quite a number of new players here, that's actually the exciting part for me because there are a lot of new companies starting now, partly like start-ups, but also growing very fastly, like HIF global, like INERATEC, like Infineum from the United States, for example. So there are many of those also in our membership of course, than any potential use case so we have Members who are on road transport. We have a lot of off-road technology companies such as leapers such as steel for example. And of course it's then about aviation, about maritime, it could be also industry. We don't have Members from industry like chemistry right now, but we are open to all of them because the idea is really to have a cross sectoral platform where all these different parts come together to promote the industrialised production and the investments into industrialised production of efuel.

Fantastic. Very clear. Interesting that you also have off-road players. Ralf, let me continue, because the news in terms of, you know, e-fuels have been quite I think “intense” in the last couple of years. You probably monitored and closely looked at the Fit for 55 package and I have a question about this. You know how this regulation has impacted the future end users for e-fuels production and what are the differences between e-fuels and RFNBOs, can you walk me through this?

So yeah, of course we, I mean that is, by the way, one of the major reasons why the eFuel was founded in the 1st place and that's the so-called Green Deal in the European Union, why? Basically all relevant regulations which can help to trigger investments into E fuels were or are still on the table of the European decision makers. So we had the unique opportunity to really change the regulatory system in Europe because so far the incentives for anybody to invest into these fuels or to bring these fuels into the market where close to zero. Because, for example, the Renewable Energy Directive, which is the core regulation in that respect in Europe, where energy providers are provided with quotas to increase their part of renewable energy in their portfolio, was not very ambitious in general, and secondly, was very one sided towards electricity. And that, for example, leads them to the fact that oil companies in Europe now have an incentive to provide charging infrastructure for electric cars and sell renewable electricity, but have basically no incentive to invest into production of renewable fuels. And that is something we have to change, and we had to change in Europe and that's why the e-Fuel Alliance was founded. So, of course we had tough debates especially when it comes to road transport because, strangely I have to say, we have in Europe a very strong, partly for my taste, ideological debate on the question where should these e-fuels be used? And this is strange because we don't have those e- fuels yet. So we are in the stage now where we have to have large investments to produce those fuels, we are not there yet. This is starting now. So I don't think you are very successful to trigger investments when you start, so to speak, by limiting the use cases for a product, I think that goes for any product. It's like if you compare with electric cars 5 to 10 years ago, we were in the same situation. Nobody was producing them, heavy investments were required, and if you would have started this by saying electric cars are only allowed with 20 kilowatt hours batteries in small cars, for example. Then of course, you wouldn't have been very successful by inventing this technology and by triggering those huge investments which are taking place in the automotive sector now on electricity and electrification. And I think, that's a little bit of a problem, because that's also quite unique. I don't I don't have the impression, Lucky can be tell us maybe a little bit more about that, but I don't have the impression that anybody in Asia or in the United States is discussing this in that way. And that's a problem for us because you can see that in the various regulations. So that is why, for example, on road transport, with the CO2 targets for car and vans, we have a “de facto” ban of combustion engines now. Why should you invest into e-fuels for road transport if there is a ban of combustion engines? And what we try now is to organise the uptake of e-fuels production in Europe by those transport modes, aviation and maritime, which have the lowest ability to pay for it, because of the global competition they are in. That's a very, from a market perspective, it's a very interesting try. We are very much for aviation for decarbonizing aviation and the maritime sector. And if you are a fuel producer, you produce the fuel for whatever use case where it is needed. But of course, you need also certain prices. And the question is, can the customers which are available, can they pay the price or are they not? Or is that a problem for them? And especially in aviation this is a problem because the airlines cannot pay any price, so to speak, for their fuel bill. And I think that's something we need to discuss differently in Europe and our regulatory framework is much better now than it used to be before the Green Deal was invented, but it's by far not sufficient in our perspective when it comes to the subject of issues.

Thank you. And I really want to give the floor to Lucky on this one also because we recently had a conversation with the airlines actually and Lucky do you want to comment on what Ralf just said here?

Yeah, I think. Thanks, Claire. So I also don't see any discussion so much on e-fuels here in Asia. We are looking into it probably now. Asia is still a little bit at the behind European when European look into the low carbon fuels already in Asia, most of us perhaps we still need to improve our fuel quality so we are a few steps behind Europe, so I don't really see that discussion picking up yet in Asia.

Yeah, if I may add, I would, I would say it depends a little bit on which country you refer, because for example in Japan, we have recently interesting conversations with the Japanese government and we also have seven members now from Japan.

Yes.

And this number is increasing quite quickly, because the Japanese government has a dedicated e-fuel strategy. And this I found a very interesting example. I mean, of course Japanese is a comparable developed country like Europe when it comes to fuel quality and also of fuel regulation. So it is comparable by the way, I would say Japan, Japan is also comparable very much to Germany when it comes to energy policy because Japan is an energy importer like for example Germany, we don't have oil or not much oil. We don't have much gas. So Japan has struggles a little bit with renewable energy because it's a very densely populated country. And when you talk about offshore wind, for example, seas in Japan coasts are very deep so it's very difficult to make offshore wind turbine and very expensive. So first they talked a lot about hydrogen. That was a goal of Japanese or also the Japanese economy for years now you see that in the car area, for example, that Toyota and the Japanese manufacturers invested a lot into hydrogen solutions like fuel cell. The problem with hydrogen is how to transport it and how to store it. And if you are an importer, and if there are no pipelines, then you rely on ships and there are no ships yet to transport hydrogen. I learned there is one ship in use to transport hydrogen from Australia to Japan, but this the loads is reduced on every way because of the problem of the of the chemical problems with hydrogen and and storage and transportation. So that's why they started to look into e-fuels because the big advantage from e-fuels is you don't need an extra infrastructure for transportation and distribution, so you can use ships which we use now for transporting oil-based fuels basically, and you can of course use them easily in any use case without changing the existing fleets. Because, any car, any truck, any ship which is in the market right now, can be run by e-fuels quite easily. So you don't need to change technology much and that's the big difference to hydrogen solutions and also to electric solutions. Electrification requires, of course, a charging infrastructure and you can drive electric only if you have an electric car. So you have to buy this car, which is quite expensive, and that is why we think by the way that road transport should play a role here, not so much because we are opposed against electrification. We believe that electrification will play a very important role in de-fossilization of road transport. But all these existing cars one point around 1.4 billion cars and trucks are on the roads of the world right now and it's not likely that, for example, in many Asian countries electrification will take place quickly or if you take the African continent, for example. So we will have combustion engines around in road transport for a long time from now and if we want to achieve climate goals then we have to find a solution for them and the only solution can, there are two solutions in place, you can just ban those cars and I don't think this is possible, and by the way, economically feasible. Or you can change the fuel infrastructure for them by using e-fuels step by step, because you can drop in e-fuels, you don't need to have 100% so you can drop in them and start so to speak, that change step by step and that is also then not so expensive anymore, because of course E fuels are more expensive than fossil fuels. That's there is no doubt.

Yes, if I may add a bit on that, I completely agree with you, Ralf. So as as what I see now, e-fuels is highly likely to be discussed and perhaps use only in the EU and perhaps in some states in, in the US. Outside the EU and the US in Asia. Japan, yes, very highly likely to use them, but it's only Japan because they also have a quite big automotive production and outside Japan, as the Australia has lots of green hydrogen and derivatives project announcement. But they mostly look for export. New Zealand also considering exports, especially when the country already uses renewable energy to produce about 80% of their electricity, so they already halfway there. Other countries in this region also looking for many for exports within the region, export to Japan but also outside the region as well. Outside Japan, it's very difficult to see discussion on e-fuels here in Asia Pacific or even other region picking up because of the we are kind of price sensitive. So yeah, that's what I I see here.

Thank you, Lucky. I think we covered a question that I had for both of you, which was the electrification versus e-fuel. So what I would like to ask you about now is the synergies and you partly answered this earlier when you discussed e-fuels and biofuels, but overall, the synergies between e-fuels, biofuels and carbon capture utilisation and storage. So how do you see that? Ralf could you share a bit your views?

Yeah. So, I mean, clearly biofuels, the big advantage of biofuels right now is that they are there. So we have large production facilities and there is still also additional potential of, especially the biofuels of the latest generation, which is using mainly bio waste, so we don't have a discussion on tank or plate anymore with these fuels. And I think that's all our members who are in this business are basically investing here. Because there is a potential and if we for example want to increase low carbon fuels in aviation for the next 5 to 8 years to come, biofuels will play a crucial role here, because we don't have the e-fuel production in large scales in place yet, right? So I think that's clear. And also if you produce biofuels, I refer again to my example Neste, because that's a very good one because they are doing that on a global scale. Of course, side notes in the Renewable Energy Directive, it's very clearly defined what actually biofuel is. So we don't want, of course, biofuels produced, for example, with huge amounts of palm oil anymore because this causes a lot of damage in in terms of environment. This is not what our Members want and this is a real issue. So when I talk biofuels, I always mean the latest or the last generation, if you will. And if you are a producer of biofuels, then of course there's the next step also to jump into the production of e-fuels is quite close and that is, for example, what they are doing so. They have these biofuel plants, then they start to also produce hydrogen here. So they add electrolyzers, because they can use this hydrogen also for the biofuel production, and if you produce hydrogen, then of course the next step is to do e-fuels for example by using biomass, which you have anyway because you are producing biofuels, as a CO2 source is also quite close, so that is why I think those synergies are very important and why the biofuel producers are very much interested also in expanding e-fuels because for them it's easier to do the next step, so to speak. But of course, this is not sufficient, at the end of the day, I think we need a lot of new players here and this is also what we see in our membership. We have around 30 companies who are, who plan to be or who are already, in the e-fuel producing business. They don't have any connection to biofuel production because of course you can produce e-fuel, so as synthetic fuels, based on renewable energy and hydrogen, also with other kinds of CO2 sources, and that is referring to your point with the carbon capture storage, carbon capture utilization debate. Of course, so there are two technologies basically to gain CO2 concentrated, we could do that via direct air capture which is a technology of the future, because when we want to eliminate CO2 emissions, for example from industry, then of course we need direct air capturing technology to gain CO2 and we maybe also have to have negative emissions one day, if we want to even reduce the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere and this can be done by direct air capturing technology. The problem is that this technology is very expensive right now. And is not used on an industrial scale. And of course it doesn't make much sense to use direct air capturing technology if you have CO2 emissions still going on. So I would say for this, for the time being, it would make a lot of sense to use carbon capture and utilisation, to use CO2 emissions which are blown, so to speak, in the atmosphere, anyway to use them to produce fuels, because then you start a circular economy of CO2. I think this is something we have to organise. We are by far not there yet, I mean, in in Europe, it's just the Commission just comes up with a strategy on that. In some parts of Europe, for example, in Germany, it's forbidden in the moment to use this technology. So, but this has to change because I don't think we will reach any climate goal and we will reach, we will have big problems to reach climate neutrality if we don't use these technologies. And that's of course then also a cheaper way compared to direct air capturing and biomass of course is an option, but it's limited of course, so if we want to really expand the production, we will need these technologies.

Thank you. I stay with the concept of circular economy of CO2 and I would like to dig a bit further into, I would say the technicalities and the economics behind e-fuels. You already mentioned, Ralf that e-fuels have this advantage that in the end there is no need for a huge investment in infrastructure because a lot of the existing infrastructure or transport modes can be adapted, but in terms of if we think about the engine manufacturers so, there's no need to adapt the engine at all for using e-fuel, so I'm talking about uh, you know, lights duty vehicles, passenger cars. And what is the exhaust emission profile of e-fuels compared to conventional fuels. So really getting into the nitty gritty here.

Yeah. Yeah, that's a very important point, of course, I mean. First of all, you can produce e-fuels in a way that they have the same the same ability to be used than fossil fuels right now. So there is basically no significant difference, and that means you can use them for any with any vehicle, for example, which is on the road right now, so I'm not aware of any manufacturer, so to speak, forbidding the use of e-fuels for their cars, because of course they are testing that and so far all the tests I am aware of with equals of course produced along the Fuel Quality Directive in the European Union. There is basically no change necessary technology wise. This of course might be different when we come to big machinery. And this is also a more sensitive issue when it comes to aviation because of course aviation fuels are in terms of safety much more require much more. Then, for example, a road vehicle, but also there it is possible to use these for current engines, which are in place and then in terms of emissions. So of course there will be still emissions. So if you use, if you run, I don't know, a current diesel car with e-diesel, then of course you still have emissions, which means you have to eliminate these emissions with the technology we have in place already, so that doesn't change much. You have some differences in certain emissions. So because e-fuels are burned a little bit with a little bit more higher temperature, I'm not a technician to explain that maybe properly, but what I know from from that side, is that there are some differences, but it's not a big issue. So basically you need emissions exhaust technology to clean emissions from cars and trucks, for example, with e-fuels like you do with with fossil fuels.

Very interesting. Thank you for enlightening us on that. And I have a related question more to Lucky about, e-fuel specifications compared to conventional fuels. Lucky do you have any idea about this? Could you share your views about this?

I think as Ralph mentioned already, that if e-fuels is like a drop in, it is like very similar with the conventional. So even I I haven't seen any draft or proposed e-fuels specification. But I think if you will be very much like the conventional for example e-gasoline specification will be as close as the conventional gasoline specification. As e-fuels are chemically synthesised fuels which are designed to mimic fossil fuels ' chemical and physical properties. So by my thinking, it should be very similar to that.

OK. Thanks for for confirming that. And I want to move on now to the economic side of things, if I may say. So, Ralph, how do you see the fuel production costs evolving in the coming years? If you can compare to other fuels such as the conventional ones, you obviously already said that the price is that the end price for e-fuel users is more expensive. But could you share a bit more insights about this?

Yeah. Yeah, sure. I mean, clearly everybody who is also part of the quite ideological debate we have in Europe I referred to before, so people who oppose e-fuels for certain use cases always argue they are far too expensive, so nobody can afford them.

So if you look into e-fuels, if they are available, how much they cost right now they are right because we are we are not producing on large scale. So when you get amounts of e-fuels right now, they are coming out of very small production lines of course, which which have no scale effects at all, and that is of course what we have to overcome. That is why we are doing what we are doing because the big advantage will be if industrialised production is coming, then you will see significant scale effects.

So I'm not saying that e-fuels in the fuel in some future will be cheaper than fossil fuels because the amount of renewable energy you have to produce to produce e-fuels are high. That is, by the way, why you will see big production lines in areas where renewable energy is cheap. That will be not Germany, for example. So you go in areas where wind and sun is much in a much larger scale available like in Northern Africa, like HIF Global went to to Patagonia Chile, which is really far away. Why did they do that? Because four times more wind than in a comparable onshore wind situation for example, in Northern Germany.

So that that has to be taken into account because a large part of the costs is renewable electricity production. And then of course you have electrolyzers to produce hydrogen, which is also not done yet on a huge scale. So also here it is quite expensive, but we will see scale effects in the. So now what does that mean concretely, of course, right now, if you take a fossil gasoline, for example, production costs are somewhat around $0.85 to one to €1.00 or $1.00 per litre. We we think that when you start an upscale production of e-gasoline in an area where renewable electricity is very cheap, very cheap means one to two cents per kilowatt-hour, then you can reach production costs of a liter of e-gasoline somewhat around €1.50 between €1.50 and €2.00.

So that's then when when everything is going well, if when the investments are done and if the production is ramping up. Then we will see this kind of pricing maybe 2030-2032, so 6 to 8 years from now.

Hum, if you for example take in Germany the tax on a liter gasoline is €0.65, then if you would reform our taxation system and would lower the tax for renewable fuels, which would be wise to do so from a climate perspective because we want to have those fuels in the market to eliminate CO2 emissions, then you are not so far away from a business case anymore. Right?

So, so I take this example for road transport, because that's the easiest to understand for everybody because everybody usually has a car and knows what the pricing is. Of course that is different in the aviation sector. But also there it's very clear the scale effects will cause much lower prices than we discussed right now. I say again, the very question is how quick can we ramp-up production and achieve these scale effect. Scale effect, that is what the discussion is about right now.

Sure. Your point is very clear here. Lucky do you want to comment on this, on the price and the economics?

I totally agree with Ralf, actually it will not be cheaper for sure. It will still be more expensive than conventional fuel. But it depends on how much it will be more expensive in in countries without subsidies, it may be really expensive. Typically, government for the new type of fuel, like what we see in the electric vehicles as well, or using natural gas in some countries, governments should do something to promote that, even for the HVO. So pricing wise, I agree with Ralph in a way.

But again, very important is the drop in solution. So you don't start with 100% e-fuels. So if you if you start with let's say 10/15 or 20% of biofuels and e- fuels in the mix, let's say in 2030 for example. Then of course, at the pump station, the price will be 0.10/0.15/0.20 maybe 0.25 cents higher per liter. And that's a very different story than right? And we never will have 100% e-fuels available for any use case in 2030, so we have to go step by step anyway, that goes for the aviation sector as well. You don't start with 100% eSAF in the beginning, because that's simply too expensive. You start with with drop-in fuels and that's the big advantage because you can't, you cannot do that with hydrogen for example, right? So all the other solutions we have require a complete new infrastructure and you cannot mix somehow with our current system and that makes them expensive.

And what I find interesting is that this discussion and this fact is not so much taken into account. So we always talk the prices of electric cars, for example, which are high enough already, but who is paying for all these billions for investments into infrastructure, charging infrastructure? Because it doesn't matter if it's done by the taxpayer or by private companies, it has to be paid, at the end, by somebody, and that will be the customer somehow. So, of course then electricity might be maybe a little bit cheaper at the charging station compared to e-fuels, but that's not the whole calculation you have to make and I think this is this is something we have to achieve also regulatory wise in the future, we have to look into different technologies in a more broader way. It doesn't, it's not enough sufficient to just look at the tailpipe. Like we do in Europe, for example with road vehicles.

I completely agree. So we need to shift, we need to have the paradigm shift here actually from looking at only one type of fuel like we've already been doing that for so long looking only at gasoline or diesel or at petroleum base and it's available in the whole world. So we only look at one type of fuel, but we need to shift our paradigm to look into more fuel. Actually different types of fuel that we use to achieve the the carbonization target because if we look into only one, I don't think we have sufficient supply to replace those petroleum base fuels. That's what I think.

Yeah, generally there's also a question of transparency of costs and who pays for what and it it is also a societal debate, but we are not going to get into that. I have a last question for both of you. First, maybe for Ralf. You know, we are still in this period we're still in recording this episode now in January, so we can have some wishes for the new year, you know in 2024. If you, uh, if you had to pick two things that you wish for, you know for your alliance in 2024 and also in light of the elections that we will have in Europe, European elections, elections in some countries as well, what what is your wish list for for this year?

Well, if I if if I can refer to what we said before on the political and regulatory debate in Europe for example. I would wish to get rid of these ideologies, so I think if we want to achieve climate goals, we need all relevant and all available technology to reduce CO2 emissions and everybody agrees on that, by the way, I mean. It's very clear and and then I don't think it's very useful to have regulations in place which at the end promote only one technology and ban other technologies.

And we need much more ability to understand in Europe that we are not alone here. I mean, sometimes I'm wondering when I for example, have these talks with the Japanese government, or when you look what is happening in the United States with the Inflation Reduction Act, right now. Sometimes I have the feeling in in political decision makers in Europe think we are an island alone and we are the only ones who are discussing the use of renewable fuels in the future. And that is how we also partly regulate this field, right? So if fuels are not produced in the way we want to produce them in the world, then we don't allow the import of these fuels in Europe, for example. So I mean, we could be another podcast on the renewable energy directives and all the provisions. I don't think that this is leading to achieving our goals and that would be my major wish.

And then the second on a global scale, since we have members from all over the world and we intend to increase that, I hope that we will see really significant investments into large scale production of of these products and I for me it's not so important where that will happen, in Asia or in in Africa, or wherever it is required, and wherever the conditions are there, be my guest. I would welcome that very much because we need to show now also that this is possible to have these fuels, because that's part of the problem. Of course, in the whole debate that is sometimes quite theoretical, because we don't have these fuels available yet.

Yeah, and that doesn't help. Of course. Lucky I have a question for you. So I know you cannot predict the future, but let's say you are trend forecaster. Lucky if you look at let's say 2035, you know what, what do you see for for e-fuels as a future? You know, how do you see them? Uh, in in the market, where do you see them? Can can you give us a bit of a of your forecast you know with the 2035 horizon?

Well, I think we all want to understand this even I want to. And frankly, I don't have a definite answer. I don't have my crystal ball with me now. So while production cost will decline like Ralf mentioned, when we take the production from pilot to demo and then to commercial stage, but uh, we I don't really see that go down significantly because we can see this in the HVO or renewable diesel for example, the economical price is still about three to five times more than conventional diesel. In term of e-fuel even more so because the commercial availability of green hydrogen as the base for e-fuels is likely to start in 2030, so I expect e-fuels to be already available in 2035, but they may be used as a niche fuel, it may not be available across the globe I guess, but it will be start to you know introduced in the market. The same like when the start of HVO I think and it's a niche fuel because of the price it will still be high during that time. That's my my personal opinion.

Sure. Interesting and Lucky we are as SGS inspire of course we are a market intelligence platform and we also published reports about these topics. So maybe you could mention a couple of studies that we've done recently that you're aware of in case this could be of interest to our listeners.

Special for e-fuels issues we are working on it and it be this year, it will come up this year. Yeah.

OK, fantastic. So thanks both of you. I I've learned a lot from this conversation. I think with this was extremely insightful. Ralf, thanks for putting all the pieces of the puzzle together. I wish you all the best to you and to the alliance members with the next step in this. Thanks a lot Lucky for your insights and we will see you next time. Well, hear, we will hear each other next time for our next episode. We will discuss other hot topics in energy and transport, as we usually do. Thanks everyone. Have a great day.

Thank you for having me Claire and have a great day. Bye.

Thank you. Have a great day. Bye bye.