Amazon Will Power Trucks With ‘Electrofuel’ Diesel To Curb Carbon Emissions

Amazon, with a massive fleet of tens of thousands of delivery vehicles, will begin using a new, renewable form of diesel fuel for trucks in southern California. The retail giant says this “electrofuel” diesel results in significantly less carbon pollution than petroleum-based diesel.

Starting in 2023, it will use this electrofuel diesel for trucks making so-called middle-mile deliveries, such as between vendors and its distribution centers, said Daniel Gross, director of Amazon’s
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Climate Pledge Fund. Though this type of fuel has the same exhaust emissions of conventional diesel when used in an engine, the carbon savings come from how it’s produced: blending clean hydrogen made from renewable energy with waste carbon dioxide that’s been captured from industrial sources. Amazon is sourcing the fuel from Infinium, a Sacramento, California-based startup that the Climate Fund invested in last year.

Including carbon pollution from oil drilling and the diesel fuel refining process, “we believe it’s about 95% reduction in CO2 emissions,” Gross tells Forbes. It also appears to be less polluting than bio-diesel. “The overall profile in terms of carbon emissions is better than what you would see from renewable diesel that’s based on some kind of food crop.”

Amazon and Infinium say the initial phase of the fuel supply deal is to get enough synthetic diesel fuel to power trucks for 5 million miles of operation per year, declining to specify how many gallons that would be. Given that the average semitruck gets about 5 miles per gallon of diesel, Infinium will likely produce several hundred thousand gallons for Amazon initially.

Gross and Infinium CEO Robert Schuetzle also declined to share financial details of the deal.

The fuel deal comes as Amazon, which says it wants to have “net zero” carbon emissions by 2040 across its operations, expands the use of renewable energy from a range of sources to offset pollution created by its delivery fleet and data centers. It also previously announced big purchases of “green” hydrogen from fuel-cell maker PlugPower and is adding up to 100,000 battery-powered delivery trucks from EV maker Rivian. Nevertheless, the company disclosed last month in its annual sustainability report that total carbon emissions across its operations were the equivalent of 71.5 million metric tons in 2021, up 18% from a year earlier.

Diesel, gasoline and other fuels made from petroleum are different chemical combinations of hydrogen and carbon. So rather than making diesel by refining it from a barrel of oil, Infinium is creating it for Amazon at a facility in Texas using hydrogen produced from water, renewable electricity and CO2, Schuetzle said.

“Electrofuels, or e-fuels, are what we call drop-in transportation fuels. They’re the same as existing fuel specifications, so no engine modifications are required. The difference is that these fuels are produced from recycled carbon, waste CO2, which would otherwise be emitted into the atmosphere as a greenhouse gas, and renewable power,” he said. “That renewable power is used to generate green hydrogen and the green hydrogen and waste CO2 are paired.”

The program is launching in California mainly because it’s such a big market.

“It’s the most populous state in the U.S., and we have a large concentration of customers in southern California and a very well-developed logistics network,” Gross said. “So in looking for the right place to pilot it, it was a straightforward choice.”