In a deal with Infinium, Amazon will be putting diesel fuel into some of its delivery vans. Amazon didn't say what it was paying, or how much synthetic fuel it was buying, but it said it would use e-fuels to cover 5 million miles of travel annually.
The trial will start with Amazon trucks that haul stuff between vendors and distribution centers.
This is a good time for Amazon to say it is trying new things to decarbonize. Climate marketing is as transparent as the company's footprint is. The deal is a test of Amazon's stake in diesel alternatives. If e-fuels take off, it stands to gain from the fact that the shopping website participated in a funding round for Infinium.
If Amazon expands its use of e-fuels, it will be known that a ruthless cost cutter thinks e-fuels could be viable for freight. Since nobody has proven that e-fuels can be produced at a large scale, it would be noteworthy.
E-fuels can be made by separating water into hydrogen and oxygen and then combining the two with carbon dioxide to make a drop-in alternative to diesel or jet fuel. It claims to be able to use renewable energy, industrial CO2 waste and green hydrogen in a unique process. You can't download e-fuels.
The International Council on Clean Transportation said that e-fuels can be very low-carbon, but they can't be low-cost at the same time. It said in 2020 that e-fuels were inefficient, converting at best half of the energy in the electricity into liquid or gaseous fuels.
The cost-effectiveness of hybrid and EV technology for applications like heavy-duty trucking will depend on how quickly battery prices fall versus the fall in the cost of hydrogen production and transport.
The price of e-fuels is one of many important steps that Amazon will take as it begins experimenting with an array of new solutions to help it decarbonize. Plug Power will be working with Amazon to power some of its trucks with hydrogen fuel cells.
The automotive industry is invested in e-fuels.
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