Commentary: AvD demands affordable mobility – and eFuels

Contents

The Automobilclub von Deutschland (Avd) certainly meant well. High fuel prices have significant potential to cause agitation, especially among those who depend on their cars and cannot simply switch to an electric car or at least a fuel-efficient hybrid. Therefore, the club’s demand for politicians to address the issue is understandable and certainly popular to some extent. However, it becomes absurd when the call for eFuels is also included.

Maximum Härte possible

Demands to make energy, including driving energy, cheaper are easy to make. You are sure to get agreement, because hardly anyone is pleased with fuel prices of 2.3 euros – and more – per liter. Those with low incomes who depend on their cars can be hit hard. “The Avd considers the skimming of unjustified profits to be justified. Price increases that stem solely from international crises, without being related to production costs in Europe, must be channeled into the common good” it says in a letter. As a club, the Avd can act with maximum force and ignore the fact that such measures must also be legally tenable in a state governed by the rule of law. The Avd can also disregard the question of how a reduction in energy taxes is to be financed. Politicians who act responsibly, or at least claim to, cannot make things that simple.

The state should refrain from expanding the CO₂ tax, it continues, which would be difficult to implement in the future. After all, governments have agreed on the roadmap for this at the European level. In the future, the CO₂ price will no longer be a national matter, but a European one. Countries that are further ahead in CO₂ reduction than Germany will be difficult to convince.

Falling prices, accelerated expansion?

A reduction in charging costs for electric cars is urgently needed, as the high prices counteract the subsidy program, writes the Avd. Those familiar with the figures may rub their eyes in surprise. Firstly, driving energy costs are a constant companion, but they make up a comparatively small proportion of the total costs associated with a car. And even at an assumed price of 50 cents per kilowatt-hour and a gross consumption of 20 kWh/100 km, you need a remarkably economical combustion engine with fuel prices of more than 2 euros per liter to at least break even in this chapter. The assumption that high charging costs thus undermine the steering effect of purchase support is, well, a very brave assumption indeed. Where the money for accelerated infrastructure expansion is to come from, if at the same time the price per kilowatt-hour is to fall, also remains unanswered. Presumably, the taxpayer will have to foot the bill.

eFuels: “a mandatory task of responsible climate policy”

Climate neutrality can only be achieved by considering the existing fleet, argues the Avd. Promoting the development and production of synthetic fuels produced from renewable energies, which the club describes as climate-friendly, is a mandatory task of responsible climate policy, it continues. Not a word about having advocated for affordable mobility just a few lines earlier and how that reconciles with the demand for eFuels, which are foreseeably neither cheap nor available in large quantities. Not a word about eFuels only being able to be described as climate-neutral with very painful bending and twisting. Climate-friendly, whatever that precisely means, the soup will never be. Not a word about the fact that for eFuels in mass quantities, renewable energy suppliers would have to be expanded on a significantly faster and larger scale than is already necessary – and is foreseeably not happening.

Clear words would be better

The club could also use the freedom to make demands without having to consider the social and political consequences to speak plainly. The hope for eFuels is a phantom giant, intended to signal from afar: “Look, everything can stay as it is.” The closer you get to the matter, the clearer it becomes that this cannot be expected. Fuel is expensive, and it will remain so. National policy can only counteract this to a limited extent. In the conflict with Iran, oil production facilities were destroyed. So even if the Strait of Hormuz were passable again tomorrow, which is not very likely, the oil price would remain high for the time being.

For the general public, eFuels are not an alternative in the long term, even if the costs were to fall significantly through scaling. Around 27 kWh of primary energy and five to nine liters of pure water are required for one liter of this synthetic fuel. In addition, there are expensive production facilities that are best run constantly, and not just when a large amount of green electricity is available in the grid. All of this is factored into the price, illustrating to some extent why the hope for cheap synthetic fuel is in vain.

The missed opportunity

Instead of encouraging those who are uncertain and facing the choice of what powertrain their next new car should have to switch to an e-car, the Avd paints a skewed picture. However, the combustion engine is not the inexpensive alternative in the medium term, but will become expensive in the coming years – both in terms of depreciation and driving energy. It is therefore all the more important that the transition for new cars is carried out quickly and that fresh doubts are not constantly sown. Because with an increasing share of new cars on the market, the supply on the used car market naturally grows, where those who cannot or do not want to afford expensive new cars can be served. Under no circumstances should eFuels be an argument for allowing the stock of combustion engine cars to continue to grow. Such an argument might have earned the Avd a little less applause in the short term. In the medium term, however, it could have earned the club a reputation for advocating for actual sustainability. That opportunity was missed.

(mfz)