Josu Jon Imaz: "Un diésel con combustible renovable emite menos CO2 que un eléctrico"

Again, I will dissect the answer. We have the technological answer ready today, which is renewable fuel. Renewable fuel that basically comes from our plants, our refineries. A plant that we started up a year and a half ago in Cartagena, which uses vegetable oils, reused oils, products from pyrolysis or plastic treatment as raw material. It uses animal fats, and with all this we make a diesel molecule that is indistinguishable from mineral diesel produced in oil refining. This is available. We currently have approximately 50 service stations in Spain, which is about 40-45% of our total, where we can refuel with 100% renewable diesel. It is somewhat more expensive, depending on the moment, 9, 10, 11, 12 cents more per liter depending on the service situation and location. Therefore, the figure is indicative. What must be taken into account is that this product pays the same hydrocarbon tax as mineral diesel from petroleum. So, if the driver were allowed, to the extent that the electric vehicle logically pays no taxes due to emissions, if it had a similar tax formula, it could perfectly well be used. And this reduces CO2 emissions because in the life cycle of this product and also these things that when I said that the CO2 goes up in Juan Mari, when a few months ago it was San Sebastián in June, I said literally, then words get lost in some media, but I said literally: a car, a vehicle with fuels, a diesel with renewable fuels today emits, in its life cycle, less CO2 than an electric vehicle. Factual.

Why technically? Because none of us consider ourselves in possession of 100% of the truth, so let's do a deep technical study and measure, and we will possibly find that in the German case this is much more evident due to the composition of the German electricity mix. In the Spanish case it is more balanced, but diesel probably has a certain advantage, but it needs to be measured. Therefore, I believe that this is the renewable fuel already available and that can continue to grow. And then we say to Europe: listen, what objection do you have that in 2035 an internal combustion engine can use renewable fuel if this has no CO2 emissions? That is, yours is an ideological war against the internal combustion engine. It is a war against CO2, because don't tell me it's a war against CO2, because you don't admit this, and this is the current technological bet.

And then there are future bets. I recently visited a plant that we are building in Musquiz, in Petronor, which is a pioneer at the European level, for synthetic fuels. How is synthetic fuel made? Synthetic fuel is a bet for the future. We are going to start producing a few thousand tons per year now at this plant. But if we are able to advance its technological development, it will be able to scale in a decade. Therefore, it is a technological bet, like any technological bet, there are probabilities that it will advance or it may fall by the wayside, but this is the path. What we do is take CO2, a stream of CO2, for example, from an aluminum plant, a paper mill, combine it with renewable hydrogen obtained from electricity by water electrolysis, and that combination, through a process with a complex name but very well known for 80 years, which is Fischer-Tropsch, which was used by the Germans in World War II to produce diesel when they did not have access to fuel or oil. This gives us a diesel, a diesel molecule exactly the same as the other, but absolutely CO2 neutral. Why? Because when we burn that in an airplane or car, the CO2 emitted by that diesel is exactly the same amount of CO2 that previously came from a stream that was captured and not emitted to the atmosphere, therefore it is neutral. So, this is a technological bet, and hydrogen is part of this.