The SAF Podcast
Welcome to The SAF Podcast, the only podcast on the internet that exclusively covers sustainable aviation fuel (SAF). So if you want to find out the real issues and challenges are for commercialising and scaling SAF production, look no further.
Every week we will be hearing from senior industry leaders who are actively shaping the future of SAF and aviation.
Hosted by Oscar Henderson and brought to you by the team at SAF Investor. Connect with us at www.safinvestor.com
The SAF Podcast
The SAF Podcast: Synhelion - Harnessing the power of the sun
In this episode of The SAF Podcast, host Oscar Henderson speaks with Gianluca Ambrosetti, CEO and co-founder of Synhelion, to explore the future of solar fuels and their role in scaling sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) production. Synhelion’s pioneering thermochemical process converts CO₂ and biomass-derived carbon into renewable liquid fuels using high-temperature solar heat and thermal energy storage—delivering continuous, 24/7 production without relying on costly green hydrogen.
Gianluca shares his journey from physicist to clean-energy entrepreneur, explains the technical differences between solar fuels, e-fuels, and biofuels, and details how Synhelion’s technology achieves high carbon efficiency and cost-competitive production targets—potentially under €1 per litre at commercial scale. The discussion covers their Dawn pilot plant in Germany, which integrates both concentrated solar power and photovoltaic-powered heating, enabling full end-to-end SAF production and critical scale-up learning.
We also examine feedstock strategies, including biomethane and CO₂ utilisation, location selection for optimal solar conditions, and the logistics of transporting high-energy-density fuels globally with minimal emissions. Gianluca outlines Synhelion’s scale-up roadmap, including intermediate commercial steps to de-risk investment, the importance of strategic and institutional partnerships, and the role of policy frameworks, mandates, and debt guarantees in financing large-scale SAF facilities.
If you enjoy the podcast, join us at SAF Investor New York where we are bringing together industry leaders to discuss the critical issues around accelerating capital deployment in SAF production. We would love to see as many of you there! You can register through the following link: https://corporate-jet-investor.myshopify.com/collections/saf-investor-new-york
Hello and welcome to another episode of the SAF podcast. This week I'm delighted to be joined by Gianluca Ambrosetti from Synhelion, and today we're going to be talking about solar fuels. There's been a lot of talk about e-fuels across the industry. Now we're going to be looking at solar fuels specifically and what Sinhelion have got going on. But before we get into that, gianluca, thanks so much for joining us. How are you?
Speaker 2:Thank you very much. It's a pleasure to be here and I'm doing great.
Speaker 1:Excellent. So before we get into the details about Synhelion and what you guys have got going on in your recent news, do you just want to take us through your background, how you ended up where you are now at Synhelion, and then a brief explainer about the origins and ethos behind synhelion sure.
Speaker 2:So I'm originally a physicist but after my phd I landed in the field of renewables, in the field of solar energy, in particular high temperature solar thermal with mirror concentrators, and during the early years of working in the field I got the chance to know the activities of Professor Aldo Steinfeld at ETH Zurich and got the chance to know many of now my fellow colleagues at Synhelion and there you know being there always, often in the lab. I got the chance to also pick up this research. You know these activities. They were doing decade-long research in the field of thermochemical pathways for the production of renewable synthetic fuels.
Speaker 2:Sounded fairly esoteric at the beginning, say, okay, what is this? But then, you know, it sunk, slowly, percolated in my mind and eventually in 16, together with Philip furler, the other uh co-ceo and co-founder, together with me, of sinhillion, we spun off um from the lab of Aldo Cineleon, which back then was, you know, five researchers. In the meantime we have grown a bit further, but the mission remains the same is to develop and scale, commercialize technologies for the production of renewable synthetic liquid fuels via our a bit, let's say, proprietary take, which is call them solar fuels, but de facto, a bit more technically, they are like, produced with heat.
Speaker 1:They're, let's say, thermochemical produced fuels, if you want I have to say I very much like the name. It appeals to my sort of ancient Greek mythological sort of nerd inside me, with Helios being the sun god being the one that drove the chariot across the sky in Greek mythology. So I'm a big admirer of the name. Where did that come from? I'm a big admirer of the name.
Speaker 2:Where did that come from? It's an interesting story. I mean at the end, the name just. You know we were trying to find combinations of names that could work out and like synthetic, because there is the synthetic part of the fuels, of the syngas, this intermediary that we and other synthetic pathways use to get to the fuel, and, of course, synthesis of the fuel together with solar and helios, helium and of the many combinations in helium was born.
Speaker 1:Fantastic. So do you just want to explain the proposition that differentiates you from other potential ESAF producers that are sort of out there in the market? What's the key sort of differentiator that everyone should immediately understand with you?
Speaker 2:so basically all processes that want to produce renewable synthetic fuels basically need to do the reversal of combustion. You burn the fuel, you release the energy to derive a process. As a chemical products. You have co2, one water vapor. If you burn hydrocarbon, you will need to take this feedstock and energize it back in a process, back to the fuel with this high energy content. So one of the fundamental dimension of doing this is how you energize this. Which form of energy do you put into the fuel? And there are, of course, purely biological process where basically they leverage the activity done by photosynthesis. There are purely electrochemical pathways that go through electrolysis to hydrogen and then the successive steps, the e-fuels. And we follow a bit a third approach, the approach of thermochemical pathways. We exploit reactions which need a lot of heat to take place, so called in jargon endothermic reactions, to stick this renewable heat in the chemical energy of the fuel. So this is, let's say, our take. We go the thermal way to energize the feedstock into the fuel.
Speaker 1:And how do you generate the required heat for that reaction to take place?
Speaker 2:We generate the heat with a renewable source. Historically the company, as I mentioned, started from concentrated solar, so bundling solar rays, concentrating them several hundred times to achieve very high temperatures. And in parallel we also developed pathways that start from electricity, fluctuating renewable electricity, which in the meantime is very cheap, especially when it fluctuates, like from, say, a PV field or a wind park, and with there we have like proprietary technologies to generate those very high temperatures. And I contextualize high temperatures. We are talking well above, above thousand degrees, typically between 1200 and 1500 degrees celsius. So these are the very high temperatures and, yes, we generate them with these two pathways concentrated solar and what we now take to the market. First with the electrical pathways, with via an electric gas heater.
Speaker 1:You mentioned PV, the abbreviation PV, which is photovoltaic. Do you just want to explain that for the non-engineering people amongst the listeners, including myself?
Speaker 2:Sure, and I may explain a bit further the process. So you also see what is a key enabler in our concept. So basically, you take a photovoltaic panel. A photovoltaic panel is irradiated by solar energy and generates electricity via the photoelectric effect. Solar energy and generate electricity via the photoelectric effect. This electricity is then used to heat via resistor, a gas in our process, and this gas is the entity we call it in jargon, heat transfer fluid, which sounds very cumbersome but in fact is fairly easy.
Speaker 2:It is the entity that transports the heat to the process where our reaction takes place, but not only and this is now the important part during the daytime, because we know that the sun shines only part of the day. We have night. So when the sun is shining and the electricity flowing, we deliver part of the heat that we generate to the process. But even a larger part we deliver to a thermal energy storage which in fact is a heat battery. So with this heat battery, when night comes I can use this heat battery to drive my process continuously. So the production of syngas and fuel, the whole production, is continuous 24-7, even if my let's say renewable source, solar, is fluctuating. The same would happen with wind. You know the same concept with wind coming and going.
Speaker 1:What happens if it's cloudy during the day and then dark at night? Wind coming and going. What happens if it's cloudy during the day and then dark at night? How much battery sort of backup can it can it store if you've got a few days of heavy cloud?
Speaker 2:this is actually a very good point, you know. So I mean the thermal energy storage, which is like a heat battery. It costs simply 20 30 times less. So this is, of course, a silver lining of going thermal is that you don't need to spend for expensive electrochemical batteries. But still, you know, you will maybe bridge a night, but you cannot bridge a week. So for this you will need to have and this is very important, you will need to have other backup solution, and we do have pathways. You may be interfaced with an electric grid or, in our case, you may burn part of the feedstock. There are a bit more technicalities, but, let's say, the fundamental message is that you need to have a backup. Furthermore, you may go in locations where it never rains and, if you allow me, this is a very important point.
Speaker 2:You know you hear often the debate about the competition for renewable power to, let's say, decarbonize the grid, to charge electric vehicles, versus producing fuels. This is a debate that we have in europe. However, the beauty of fuels is that you can produce them everywhere on the world and transport them. This is what we do is the high energy density of the fuels is what basically allows them to transport them wherever you want with minimal cost and emissions. So to produce your fuels you don't need to be there in competition nearby other users. You can go in the middle of nowhere where you have best conditions, produce the fuel there at lowest cost and transport them, say, into Europe, the US, wherever you want to use them, without basically adding much of the cost.
Speaker 1:So this is you know I made a bit of parentheses, but this is coming back to the fact that you know you tend to go to locations where there is little cloudy days but on the the sort of flip side of that, the big argument regarding saff production is doing it near the point of use for emissions reduction, and the concept of e-fuels and solar fuels is high emissions reductions from the fuel. So if you are then transporting it, isn't that slightly undermining the the emissions benefit that you get from producing this fuel?
Speaker 2:No, actually it's very, very little because of this very, very high energy density that chemical fuels have. So, besides the fact that you could, of course, fuel your vessel, you mainly transport this via sea, and you could fuel the vessel with renewable fuel. But even if you wouldn't, the impact of the emissions of transportation of such a high energy density fuel per unit energy is very low, so you have a marginal impact, right, which?
Speaker 1:needs to be calculated.
Speaker 2:I mean as a parent. Of course you need to do a total life cycle analysis before claiming emission reductions of course we've um, so we've covered the, the photovoltaic aspect of it.
Speaker 1:But there's another sort of sort of solar harvesting sort of solar harvesting sort of technology. You've got, you've got the. You've got the heliostats exactly, don't you? Which, which is slightly different. Do you just want to explain how they are technologically and also operationally different from the sort of more traditional pv?
Speaker 2:um sure so the with the concentrator, solar thermal technology, you don't go through the intermediate step of electricity generation. So, basically, you bundle solar irradiation, you concentrate it. You can imagine these heliostats, this sea of mirrors aiming all at the top of a tall tower. And on top of this tower there is a device called solar receiver which, as the name says, receives the concentrated solar radiation and uses it there to heat up again our heat carrier, our heat transfer fluid. And then the process is exactly the same. Then you have the thermal energy storage for the night.
Speaker 2:Your reactor is driven by the heat coming from this medium transferring the heat.
Speaker 1:How much space do these take up, respectively, in terms of the required area needed to have to concentrate enough solar energy to be able to make a commercial size facility, because presumably it's not a small area of land, or is it a small energy, a small area of land because they're highly efficient? What are we talking about?
Speaker 2:here, I mean you have an efficiency gain, but the fundamental thing to consider is that solar radiation we got plenty of it, but it's diluted. It comes down at best it's around one kilowatt per square meter. So it means that you need, whatever you do, large surfaces. I mean we are talking like, let's say, for 100,000 ton per annum plants. We are talking about square kilometers. You know this is a large surface which is common to basically all the pathways.
Speaker 2:The concentrated solar pathway with mirrors is the one that has the highest efficiency, from solar to heat, therefore requires the smallest footprint with respect to, let's say, the PV plus heater pathway, which may require 30, 40% more surface, and actually a power to liquid pathway, which is even slightly less efficient, will require even a bit more, but it does not change fundamentally the orders of magnitude. So I mean, of course you gain something by having a more efficient system like concentrated solar, but all the pathways will require a substantial surface which, again, being in a location where there is little around, where there is a desert, where you have good resources or a near desertic area, you can I mean land is per se, not a limitation before we move on to sort of, I want to talk about the carbon aspect of your, your feedstock.
Speaker 1:I just wanted to ask you it's quite well known that the rate and scale that solar panels have come down in in price in over the last sort of 10, 15 years it's sort of in the 80 90 percent levels and presumably you're able to sort of leverage that reduction in cost to a certain extent. But but I just wanted to get your understanding about the potential for further cost reductions as plant scale, as sort of the technology matures. Considering we've already had that solar panel cost reduction, what potential is there for further cost reduction? Because one of the big conversations around ESAF is how expensive it is compared to hefersaf so basically, you will need to scale.
Speaker 2:There is nothing around. I mean, most of it is surface to volume, which, um, it's physics, it's not even physics, topology, it's geometry, basically that the chemical and oil and gas industry has learned this a long way and the replications can help, but alone is not enough. So it's normally a combination of a feed the boat, as as you go to larger plant capacities you also have the balance of plant. You know there are components that you will need in the plant, small or big, that again will impact much more on smaller plant. So you will need basically to go big. Some of the components are already at very low cost and you, rightly so, mentioned PV.
Speaker 2:This is actually one of the reasons why we are commercializing first with the electric heat pathway instead of the concentrated solar, because at intermediate scales you immediately get to a low cost, because you can piggyback on a massive cost reduction that the industry has already made, as opposed to cst, which we still need ourselves to scale, and come into this low costcost regime. But eventually you will need to have very large installations, as I said. So there is basically no way around this. And this is of course for everybody, for all the technologies, the challenge that you have. The challenge is that you need to have very large installations that are very capex intensive, but they are the only way to really come down with production costs is this large scale?
Speaker 1:because I saw something when I was doing some research for this, saying that you want to look at making having production below one euro per liter of fuel, which is a remarkably low amount. And how do? How is scale just? The solution is how you're going to do that, or how else do you make. Does that become possible, and is it? Do you think that's actually sort of realistic or is it a bit of sort of marketing that you just sort of thrown out there?
Speaker 2:No, no, it is realistic, it's realistic and it is our marketing people.
Speaker 1:I'm going to apologize now for that.
Speaker 2:No, no, but it is fair enough. But I think this is a hard target that we have and we have solid foundations for it. Some of it, as you rightly mentioned, will come from scale, and we are talking about production capacity of half a million ton per year. Plus that you will need to really bring down the overall costs to component scaling, to bundling of balance of plant and all these kind of things. This is the one dimension.
Speaker 2:The other one is, let's say, the peculiarity of our technology, of what it allows to do. You know, and I would say you know, we have renewable heat, which is the cheapest um continuous renewable energy source, and I underscore continuous. Continuous is very important for the is very important for having the whole plant, the expensive plant, running 8 000 hours a year and not just a few thousand years when, a thousand hours a year when you have the sun. So this is very important. It's cheap. We have an efficient process so, like, let's say, the heat to chemical fuel efficiency is very high, above 90 percent.
Speaker 2:We have a process that also makes a very efficient utilization of the feedstock. So from our feedstock we make more fuel than, let's say, more traditional processes. So therefore we are less exposed also to the cost of the feedstock. We basically use no renewable hydrogen and renewable hydrogen, despite being a very important technology, is also very expensive, has proven difficult to cut in costs, and I'm talking about electrolytic hydrogen. So this allows us, in combination with the first part, scale and the peculiarities of our technology, to target production costs that will stray towards the one euro per liter when we have this large scale in the mid 30s and what about the carbon side, that's, that's coming from biomass.
Speaker 1:So where are you collecting your biomass? From what sort of biomass are you using and where does that come into the process?
Speaker 2:This is, of course, the other fundamental question. So we covered the energy source, or like one of the main energy sources. Now we need to cover the carbon source. If you want to have a circularity of carbon, you want a renewable fuel. You basically have only two options. One is direct air capture. We come from the same lab at ETH of Climeworks, so we know very well that process. We have actually demonstrated that integration on the rooftop of ETH. However, for fuel production, direct capture remains a very expensive carbon source.
Speaker 2:The alternative is biomass. But you know there is a big caveat here. It's not biomass as an energy source, which is what you normally use in a traditional biofuel, but you take it as a carbon source, and this matters because biomass has an energy content but has also, let's say, a lot of carbon, that is, I call it fully oxidized. That does not carry any energy. We use that one as well. So basically, we can start from a wider range of feedstock. We go through a proven and established process. That is not our process. That is biogas production via anaerobic digestion. By anaerobic digestion we then get out the biomethane, so the energy containing carbon, and the CO2, the typical products of anaerobic digestion. We then take both also the CO2, also the part that has no energy and process it into the fuel. Therefore, what we do have, we have a higher carbon efficiency. More of the atoms of the carbon source of my feedstock lend into the fuel twice as much and even more. This implies that we have a certain, we are less dependent on feedstock limitations and on feedstock cost.
Speaker 2:Still, you will need to source the feedstock and to source this. In some locations where you have good solar and wind irradiation, you may have a good local availability of biomass as well. It seems a bit paradoxical, but actually you have many places on the planet where you have good wind and solar and a good feedstock availability. When you go into the hard desert where you have very little available biomass, you will eventually need to import it and transport it. This is actually again a study that we did very thoroughly.
Speaker 2:Thoroughly and it sounds a bit counterintuitive, but again, maritime transportation can make marvels in bringing things efficiently and I mean with little emission and cost. They always are coupled. They are often are coupled because I mean the costs are the cost of fuel, but the transportation can be done over thousands of kilometers with really, really minimal impact also on the cost of fuel. So again for sourcing. Summarizing, many projects have a local ecosystem that can feed enough carbon and being efficient. We don't need as much as other process. But other locations still remain possible and have sometimes also a very, very large potential via import of the feedstock.
Speaker 1:Does the ability to take the biomethane and the CO2 give you greater flexibility in what feedstock you can use or sort of reduce the amount that you you require because you're taking so many more carbon molecules from from the actual feedstock? Does that make sort of great sort of efficiency or costs benefits for sort of the overall o OPEX of a facility because you can take more than is otherwise as you're using it just as the carbon source?
Speaker 2:Let's say that I mean the process. I mean we need less. So this is the advantage. However, I mean, at the end, the flexibility in terms of feedstock will depend on the anaerobic digestion process. It's a fairly flexible process. It's more flexible than fermentation to ethanol. It may be more flexible than biomass gasification because biomass gasification can be picky, especially if the substrate varies, the feedstock varies over the year. So we have a higher, I would say, through this process, we have a higher flexibility in terms of feedstock. That said, you know there are some limitations. I mean, like hardwood is not ideal for anaerobic digestion. So some limitations do exist.
Speaker 1:No, do exist no old mahogany furniture is going to be finding its way into a, a bead stock for you no, that would be a pity.
Speaker 2:Mahogany is such a beautiful. It's such a beautiful wood. This one needs to be kept.
Speaker 1:To be honest, that was the first hard one that I could think of my knowledge of wood. Obviously needs work.
Speaker 2:This is the densest one, but I mean, some soft woods can be digested. They don't have the same performance as other things, but yeah, then it becomes very technical and, of course, this is a topic that I like a lot, but I could spend some hours on it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I can tell we spent half an hour just talking about the process, which is very impressive. So everyone's got a very good understanding of the chemical and the process, the technological process that you guys have got going on. You've currently got one sort of is it a demo facility or that's up and running in Dawn and that is currently producing as a demo plant. Do you just want to explain to people you know how much is being produced there, where it is, and a little bit more about that?
Speaker 2:sure. So it's our first industrial pilot doing, from doing the whole chain, um, it, um. It has a nominal capacity of um the core components of around 100 ton per annum of fuel. Of the core components of around 100 ton per annum of fuel we do, we have liquefaction and everything. We have the fuel synthesis. We have a fischer drop unit of ineratec. That those the fuel synthesis. So we we have the whole chain and, uh, we have both technologies.
Speaker 2:This is interesting, you know, because at the beginning we didn't announce it, you know. Know, when we built the plan you could only see the mirrors, but behind us even a PV field, so we have even the electric pathway, so we can run both the technology and demonstrate and say the risk, both of them. So it's a fairly impressive facility. It's a 20-meter tall tower and it's for us a fundamental step because we demonstrated several components. We take a stage approach, as it is normal to do. There is components, then you integrate a bit more, but here is really the whole chain and I would say there are not that many companies that have done this and when you come and see it, I I'm of course, a bit biased, but you know, it's always very, very impressive. The pictures don't give you the, don't give you the impressions that you have when you are there, when you inside you over the six stories of pipes, of equipment and everything. It's yeah, it's, it's far away from the lab at ETH that's a memory.
Speaker 1:Do you need to wear sunglasses when you go there?
Speaker 2:when we do. Actually, this is a very good point in the sense when we do test with the concentrated solar, when we do receiver tests, you cannot look, even, of course, if the radiation, the main part, goes inside the receiver, so otherwise it would be wasted. Still, you know there is a ring around that is reflected a bit and there you need to be very, very careful because it can really damages you, is your eyes. So you need to wear, you know, glasses, specific glasses like welding glasses and things like this.
Speaker 2:So Ray-Bans won't cut it?
Speaker 1:No, they look cool, though they do look cool. They do look cool. How have you sort of financed and found investment for Dawn and sort of for sort of the development of this technology? Where's the investment come from? I kind of have to ask this question as sort of SA, sort of the development of this technology, where's the investment come from? I kind of have to ask this, this question, as sort of staff investor.
Speaker 2:so it goes without saying otherwise people will strip it from the title. We'll strip the the second part now. So basically, sinalian was started with a private individual and family office, but then we moved over to include the strategics. Strategics have been also at the backbone of our financing. Dawn was also financed with some public funding from germany and uh yeah, so these are's say this is the mix that made it. So basically, private individual, family offices, strategics in a fairly central role and support from the German government. We have also support in Switzerland. So we have like governmental support is not missing and is helping us a lot as well governmental support is not missing and is helping us a lot as well.
Speaker 1:Was there just more interest from strategic investors as opposed to sort of pure VC or sort of the sort of incubator, accelerator sort of type of investors? Was that just where you found the interest from, or is that who you sort of specifically sought out to get investment from?
Speaker 2:It's a bit apart. I mean, we started with private, so they cover the substantial part for a longer time than we had got ENI on board and then some other strategies came along. I think this is also a bit part of the, you know, of the evolution curve of the company from its early stage to a startup to how nowadays I think we are defined as being a scale up course, like a different kind of pockets open and become interested, and nowadays we are starting to see a real interest also from institutional investors. Strategics will remain important, also for the perspective of the partnerships and, like, let's say, eventually also for the adoption of the technology that we are developing.
Speaker 1:But, um, institutional investors are now coming into play as well are you planning or looking to do any additional fundraising in the near in the near future? Is that something you're sort of planning for or sort of currently undergoing sort of where about with future, future raises?
Speaker 2:we are planning um a financing round, and this is I mean we are. It gets to be finalized in exact timing and you know other boundary conditions, but it's something that within the coming few months, a half a year, will um will get going few months, half a year will get going.
Speaker 1:So if there are any strategic or institutional investors listening, they should look to get in touch with you over the next couple of months. Is that what you're saying?
Speaker 2:Absolutely. You know the adage after the round is before the round. This is a capital intensive business. We have a well-defined timeline, that it is a timeline that wants to have the first large scale commercial plant online by 2030. So we have some, some milestone to hit, you know. So we have some milestone to hit, you know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that sort of leans into the next question I was going to ask. We've talked about the requirements of scale in order to produce efficiently and as sort of a cost competitive end product, but obviously that being hugely capital intensive and the front end and there being a very high risk profile attached to that and attracting and sort of persuading investors that they can, you know, get a return in a timely manner on their, on what they're invested within sort of the horizons that they expect and that have been planned for. How have you sort of the horizons that they expect and that have been planned for? How have you sort of, how are you planning on overcoming that rather significant challenge and hurdle that you got to jump over?
Speaker 2:so basically what we are trying to do now, right now, is that um to devise the first uh, large-scale commercial plan. We have demonstrated with um plant stone, we have demonstrated basically the entire chain as well as the ability to company to stem projects, is not a very large project but nevertheless is a complex project across disciplines and managing many stakeholders. So now we try to go to the scale we are aiming and designing, let's say, the first commercially viable size that we do see in the range between 30,000 100 000 tons and this plant. We aim to have it on the ground and in operation by 2030. So this is the first part of the roadmap that lies ahead of us and we are we are, you know, developing this, you know with locations, with everything you know, with partners, you know, really bringing the things on the ground.
Speaker 2:These are not our point experiments, this is a really project development and even pre-fitting studies in parallel.
Speaker 2:We need to be aware that we are making a scale up step, which will be anything between 300 and thousand, and we are strongly convinced that those scale-up steps are not um advisable to do the meat only once.
Speaker 2:We have studied a lot of history of other companies, of, you know, trying to see where, um, you know others that had very promising technologies, you know, somehow had faced important, challenging and often it was in this into large scale up steps. So what we are doing is we are planning an intermediate technology scale up step of a factor 10 from current plant dawn, likely in the same location, likely in the same location, and this plant will have the main objective to enable this scale up step. It will produce fuels but it will be designed to be very lean because it's an enabler, you know, to come, let's say, in a derisked way, to the large plant, especially to the investment decision point for the last plant, so that we can, at that point where we really pull the trigger to the full financing of the first commercial plant, you know, have, let's say, lowered enough the perceived risk. And sometimes I say perceived risk because you, you know there is a lot of skepticism, a lot of risk perception, but you know, like we have scaled things before.
Speaker 1:You know the technology is known in many aspects, I think that scaling can be really managed and the risks are sometimes, yeah, perceived to be too big we had um a recent episode where we talked about Fulcrum, bioenergy and the unfortunate situation there with Jim Stonecipher, and one of the big takeaways from that was testing technology on a small scale, the full end-to-end capacity of that technology at scale, and then replicating it almost like sort of lego was the sort of was the sort of phrase jim used and then just building that at scale, rather than having to chop and change technology and adjust technology as the as the um capacity increases inside.
Speaker 1:But obviously you guys are doing a full, full end-to-end production now at Dawn and then with your intermediate sort of step in the middle, rather than taking a massive scale-up leap, sort of all the Lego bricks it looks like were in place to scale and then meet your target of 2030. And also to satisfy, you know, investors, to sort of overcome their sort of hesitation at any potential or perceived risks they might see with your, with your technology and your um commercialization plan yeah, you put it very well.
Speaker 2:You know like it's um, there are many aspects that need to be demonstrated in the entire chain. But I think also and this is I mean I know only partially the the I mean the details of the full issues that fulcrum had are not always public, but the scale up steps there were sure one, uh but also that it's a complex group of stakeholders you need to have this system needs to manage so that also information flows, because it's an integrated process. So if you don't speak enough between, let's say, system boundaries, you may have misunderstandings which then eventually cripple the project. So going through all these steps, let's say, mitigates these risks. We try. You know the challenges that you need.
Speaker 2:All of these steps need to be a compelling case. So what I call an intermediate step is an intermediate step. Are we going to make it a compelling case for investors? We are not gonna make it like just a step that you know that you take. Okay, this is the pain that I need, the pill that I need to swallow to go to the large commercial plant. We are really trying to design it and we have, for instance, the whole offtake of this intermediate step already sold. So we have managed, you know to do this, you know to manage this. You know a good premium. You know we try really to, to, to make all of this, all of these steps, compelling and financeable, while at the same time really try to avoid these very large steps that eventually have crippled many projects.
Speaker 1:On your strategic partners. Recently you guys have tested some of your fuel going through Swiss Air's infrastructure. Is that right Go over sort of a couple of weeks ago I can't actually remember how long ago that that was done. So them and sort of lufthansa are big, big partners of yours, and I saw some other interesting tests that you've you've done with your fuel on sort of the the ground and maritime side. You've tested it in cars, motorbikes and, uh, a steam, steam ship steamboat, which is, um, which is very interesting. So first of all, briefly explain why you tested it on a steamboat, and then we'll get, and then just explain a bit more about the swiss air testing you did, because choosing a steamboat from a, from a lake is is an interesting test case yes, you know, the steamboat is part of um, of a premium experience that you can make on the lake of lucerne, where the skfa so the company behind it wanted to have something that you know that completes this premium experience.
Speaker 2:It's an amazing ride. I did it, you know it's blows you away, you know it's so beautiful, even as being swiss, you know, every time I'm, you know, speechless. And they wanted also to give to this um, to this premium experience like the, also the fact that it is forward-looking and the story goes, you know, when you take this ride it's actually very beautiful. There is the visionary that actually started this um lake navigation company. That back then was, you know, totally like as a fool, as a crazy guy, that wanted, you know, do this with steamboats instead of the old rowing boat, and this kind of pioneering spirit, this message is something that is contained in the adoption for these steamboats. You know it's also like the steamboat was a symbol back then of pioneering, forward-looking vision, and so the same they try to embed now with the adoption of our fuels in the steamboats.
Speaker 1:And what about the Swiss Air tests that you ran?
Speaker 2:Actually, the Swiss Air test is very interesting because sometimes you see the numbers and you think, okay, those are not very large quantities but, very importantly, you need to manage to do this. You know, putting something in an existing infrastructure, with all the compliance with all the specs that you need to meet with, all the kind of things that you need to do, is a massive learning. So all these cases, but especially the one where we now put, where we now basically injected our barrel into the existing infrastructure, actually in a refinery, you know, especially this one is a big learning on how actually you will need to manage the product value chain as you scale the production. So it's not only a showcase, it's a very, very important technical learning that we are undergoing, so it is of very high significance.
Speaker 1:Excellent. And the final sort of topic that I want to cover is policy. There's always a lot of talk about policy whenever you're talking about SAF. Topic that I want to cover is policy. There's always a lot of talk about policy whenever you're talking about SAF, whether that be in Europe, us, emerging policy, in Asia, and one of the consensus is that you know that there's policy in place, but it potentially there's work that needs to be done, particularly on the e-fuels side, and I know there's the sustainable transport investment plan coming later this year, the STIP in Europe. What's your thoughts on where policy is, where policy needs to go in order to maximise the sort of the help that it can give the industry to scale? You know ES, esaf, solar fuel, in both sort of europe and sort of switzerland, sort of internet, sort of trans country, cross-border and within sort of individual countries as well in general, I think that one, there are two dimensions that policy, where policy can help, or actually where policy is needed as an enabler.
Speaker 2:One is to secure demand. I'm investing in a plant, as we discussed, very expensive CapEx investment. The plant needs to have returns, predictable returns for 20, 30 years. I need to have returns, predictable returns for 20, 30 years. I need to have a secure demand.
Speaker 2:This is where mandates, subquotas, quotas, um subventions, so incentives can really help and they are in place and they work. You know, you see the effect. I mean, I mean, like you have this in Europe and the effects are felt. So this is a first dimension and I think that we have examples of these, you know, coming into place. Of course we would like to have it more broadly, but it is coming, I mean. And then the other dimension is basically to help facilitating the financing of these very large plants.
Speaker 2:You know, this is the other part of the equation.
Speaker 2:So, of course, financing our phone, so basically, like, just like, simply grants given, given to projects in different phases.
Speaker 2:This is, of course, an important aspect, but perhaps the biggest leverage that there is from, let's say, from the policy standpoint, is to enable an ecosystem of debt guarantee, a depth guarantee, so that basically, uh, depth can be raised for the project at lower um, a lower cost of capital, because this is, at the end of the day, the cost of capital in a capex dominated plant, so I mean where the capex is dominating, eventually the cost of fuel will be very importantly dependent on the weighted average cost of capital of the project. So this is where you know if you have like a big part of debt, this is guaranteed and therefore has like low interest rates, this can help substantially, you know to, let's say, to both make a project possible and, you know, make it uh, you know, interesting from the economic standpoint do you think currently there's enough support on that second point to sort of help stimulate the industry, or is there work to be done on that aspect, as opposed to sort of the demand side with the, with the mandates?
Speaker 2:I think that much um is being done. More will be needed. I mean um, but I said, you know, sometimes I say we develop technology, I mean like I, I I don't do politics, so I mean I sometimes, um, you know it's difficult, uh, you know, I don't want to take a too um, you know, to determine position also because it's not my personal role and I think that more can be done. But I'm important is also is that I would say and this is perhaps an important message is that what has been now put in place should stay. The worst that can happen is if you change or backtrack, because this will create a new security which, even if you then come back and you revert, will leave again the sense of an unstable and unpredictable future. I think we need to stick to what we did. More can be done, but the most important thing is that we really now, in the different countries where these measures have been taken, we stick to this. This is the, I believe, the most important thing.
Speaker 1:Well, we've seen the effects of not sticking with it in the US. I mean, that's a prime example of what can happen when policies are placed and then removed, and then adjusted and then re-implemented, as it has been now, and the effects of that are still ongoing in terms of the uncertainty that that brought on the market Fair enough On the other side I must must admit that this is a very personal comment that you know that in the us you need also to calculate with it.
Speaker 2:You know that it changes, you know that this part of the game, so you basically price in that risk profile. You know, I mean it's, yeah, I mean if you don't, well, in europe, let's say this is another. I mean, if you consider, like, the view that the world has on the us and europe and perhaps china, you see that. You know that those, those count, those are archetypes, archetypes of different way of doing politics. And in the us you can expect something like this. You would not expect it in europe. If in Europe there is a backtrack, this would heavily damage the belief that the regulations will eventually create a stable, long-term demand.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, on that note, gianluca, thanks so much for joining us. I'm wishing the sun shines on you and everyone listening to this today, and helios is out in his chariot and there's no clouds, um, but thanks so much for joining us. That was um a fascinating discussion and really interesting to hear about the the intricacies of your technology and your overall pathway to to commercialization. We wish you the best of luck with everything going forward.
Speaker 2:Thank you very much.