Safran, through its Safran Corporate Ventures investment arm for high-tech startups, has teamed up with Engie New Ventures, Engie’s venture-capital subsidiary dedicated to innovative startups accelerating the energy transition, and with other partners—HTGF, MPC Capital, Extantia, Planet A and FO Holding—to invest in Ineratec, a young German firm offering technologies for the development and production of carbon-neutral synthetic fuels that could replace fossil fuels.
Ineratec provides modular plants to convert “green” hydrogen, made using renewable electricity and biomass CO2 or captured CO2, into carbon-neutral fuels like e-methane, e-diesel and e-kerosene. Headquartered in Karlsruhe, Germany, the firm has already deployed 13 e-fuel demonstration plants for a range of applications and opened a first sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) plant in Lower Saxony. Ineratec now intends to fund a pilot plant in Frankfurt capable of producing 3,500 metric tons of fuel a year, including SAF supplied directly to the city’s airport. This project is planning to deliver up to 10 MW by 2023.
No time to lose decarbonizing aviation
Safran’s investment is fully aligned with the company’s strategic roadmap for decarbonized aviation and reflects its full support for the accelerated development of sustainable aviation fuel production by energy companies. “Safran is very committed to this field which is indispensable achieve the industry’s objective of becoming carbon-neutral by 2050. Ineratec’s leading-edge technologies will bolster the technical expertise needed to develop a certified process for aviation,” said Eric Dalbiès, Safran Senior Executive Vice President, Strategy, Technology and Innovation.
This investment will enable Safran to work on different technologies for sustainable fuels that can already be blended up to 50% with current fuels and will be 100% usable in ultra-optimized future-generation engines.
A clear commitment to the energy transition
Engie New Ventures’ investment is driving development of a range of decarbonized fuels for heavy goods transportation while helping Engie to reach its goals for green hydrogen and CO2 reductions for its customers.
“We’re proud to be investing in a startup that combines innovation with the ambition of speeding the transition to net-zero carbon. Hydrogen and e-fuels will play a key role in decarbonizing heavy mobility such as maritime, railway or air transport” said Olivier Sala, Engie Vice-President, Research and Innovation. “This investment is going to support Engie’s ambitious strategy of being able to produce 4 GW of green hydrogen by 2030.”
The investment joins Engie New Ventures’ broad range of solutions spanning the hydrogen value chain.
“This is a massive boost for the scale-up of our e-fuel production capacities, enabling us to strengthen our focus on further industrialization to achieve plant capacity on a megaton scale. We will provide sustainable, affordable e-fuels and materials for everyone,” added Tim Böltken, co-founder and managing director of Ineratec.
