German fuelling association UNITI to push for e-fuels in Europe

The leading association for small and medium fuel retailers in Germany will be opening an office in Brussels to bring synthetic fuels to the energy debate.

The German association for small and medium sized mineral oil companies, UNITI Bundesverband mittelständischer Mineralölunternehmen e.V., has decided to open an office in Brussels in order to better represent its interests in the European Commission and the European Parliament.

UNITI provides a wide range of expertise in the fields of fuels, lubricants and heating oil, and represents over 6,200 petrol stations in Germany. Every day, some 4.5 million customers visit a service station of UNITI member companies.

Elmar Kühn, Managing Director of UNITI, explained the association’s decision to move into Brussels.

"Climate-neutral synthetic liquid fuels currently only play a minor role in the EU energy policy. We want to get more involved and drive the topic of e-fuels. In the next few years, for example, the evaluation of the European CO2 fleet targets is pending. Our goal is for the revised directive to include climate-neutral e-fuels as a means reaching climate targets," said Kühn.

UNITI will also continue to support the European Confederation of Fuel Distributors (ECFD) for the heating market and service stations, as well as the Union of European Lubricants Industry (UEIL) for the lubricants sector.

Pushing e-fuels on the European map

The German association believes ‘e-fuels’ will be the energy carriers of the future – carbon-neutral liquid fuels that are easy to transport, can use existing infrastructure and be blended with traditional diesel and unleaded.

E-fuels are generated exclusively with renewable energy. In the process, hydrogen is produced using renewable electricity (solar, wind etc.) and then combined with carbon dioxide, e.g. from industrial exhaust gases or from the air, to form a hydrocarbon with zero net greenhouse gas emissions.

Some of the positive features of e-fuels are high level of supply security, its affordability (it can be produced at 1€ per litre in the medium term) and the use of the existing vehicle fleet.

With 237.5 million vehicles on European roads and 12.5 million new registrations per year, e-fuels could help reduce carbon emissions without the need for a new energy system, vehicle fleet and fuelling infrastructure.

On economic terms, e-fuels will secure 75,000 jobs in the field of drive technology and create 470,800 new jobs in Germany, according to IG Metall 2018.

By opening an office in Brussels, UNITI will hope to boost the presence of synthetic fuels in the energy transition debate.