Saturday, March 25, 2023, 3:42 p.m.
The pact between Germany and Brussels opens a new scenario in which the Basque Country is strengthened thanks to the pilot plant for its production promoted by Petronor and the Basque Government together with the Saudi oil company Aramco.
The infrastructure, which is projected in the Port of Bilbao and has an experimental approach, foresees an investment of 106 million euros, of which the regional Executive will contribute 28%. The goal is for it to come into operation in 2025 with a production capacity of up to 2.8 million liters per year. Thus, it becomes the most advanced facility of this type in Spain and joins other major projects that oil companies have been promoting to find alternatives to traditional fossil fuels.
This type of gasoline is net in emissions, that is, in its preparation it saves as much CO2 as the one emitted by the engines when burning it. To achieve this, hydrogen obtained with renewable energies and CO2 from the atmosphere are used, obtaining a product that can be used in current engines. It is, therefore, a formula that advances towards the “zero emissions” objective, but does not require the elimination of the entire fleet of combustion vehicles and would allow more comfortable rates in the adaptation of the automotive industry, as well as for the development of charging infrastructures.
Petronor’s number two, José Ignacio Zudaire, defends that “decarbonizing is not just electrifying.” In this sense, he insists on not excluding technologies and letting them all develop so that they add up. And it is that the journey is still long, since the cost of synthetic fuels multiplies almost ten times that of traditional ones.
From the Basque Government, which seconded the position of Germany against a maximalist veto of the combustion car in 2035, the Minister of Economic Development, Arantxa Tapia, pointed out this week that with this movement “Europe has endorsed our thesis.” The Basque automotive cluster (Acicae) also insisted on not discriminating against technologies and not trusting everything to electric cars.