Climate protection is a global task that must also be understood as a global challenge. There are regions in the world where neither the ambition nor the political incentive makes achieving the climate targets by 2050 tangible. Often, the European perspective of our decision-makers thwarts international cooperation and partnerships instead of specifically promoting these regions, enabling joint action, and leveraging potential synergies.
We must take advantage of all the opportunities available to us - including technological ones. Real, pragmatic climate protection draws on a range of technologies and makes use of their respective advantages - including in the transport sector. None of the technologies discussed so far, be it electromobility, hydrogen propulsion, or the use of eFuels, stands alone. They have a complementary effect and minimize their mutual disadvantages. The public debate often focuses too much on the use of eFuels in new passenger cars and neglects the decarbonization potential of the existing fleet of around 1.4 billion vehicles, 90,000 ships, 20,000 aircraft, or construction machinery and generators worldwide.
We need the willingness to pay off road transport to stimulate investments in electrification, the ramp-up of the production of green hydrogen and its derivatives, and thus also to leverage synergy potentials for other sectors. If we neglect eFuels, we slow down climate protection in sectors where batteries are mostly too heavy, too inefficient and too ineffective. For heavy-duty transport, long distances, for ships and airplanes, many off-road applications, but also for the CO2-free steel mill or basic material production in the chemical industry, a move away from liquid and gaseous molecules with high energy density is difficult, mostly even impossible. If we want to help these sectors achieve significant CO2 reductions consistently and ambitiously, we must not allow ourselves to be driven by ideologies.
