Lfactory that emitted the most carbon dioxide (CO2) in the world in 2021 is in South Africa. It is owned by the South African Synthetic Oil Limited (Sasol) and its main business is to liquefy coal to turn it into gasoline. With 57 million tonnes per year, this plant alone emits more CO2 than countries like Portugal, Norway or Switzerland. It also produces 7.6 million tons of gasoline from coal, a third of the country’s needs.
The liquefaction of coal is a technique of “energy sovereignty” of great importance. Its history begins in Germany during the interwar period with the coal hydrogenation processes developed by the chemist Friedrich Bergius. During the war, the synthetic fuel factories made the planes of the Luftwaffe fly and advance a good part of the tanks of the Wehrmacht. A technological feat, hydrogenation was an economic and environmental disaster: the reaction took place at 400°C; 100 atmospheres and 4 to 6 tons of coal were needed to produce one ton of gasoline, which was 10 to 15 times more expensive than its oil-based equivalent.
Despite these shortcomings, countries such as France, England, Japan and even Italy, despite being poor in coal, embarked on liquefaction in the 1930s, invoking energy sovereignty and, in the longer term, the depletion of oil wells. The liquefaction of coal does not disappear in the rubble of Nazism. Quite the contrary: after the war, German experts were coveted, especially by South Africa, which was poor in oil and rich in coal. In 1955, the segregationist government created Sasol and subsidized its production to counter the economic sanctions linked to apartheid and preserve its energy sovereignty. With the oil shocks of the 1970s, Sasol became the technological leader in the field, envied around the world. The American administration of Jimmy Carter creates a public company endowed with 20 billion dollars, the Synthetic Fuels Corporation, which plans to produce 3 million barrels per day in the 1990s. The oil counter-shock will get the better of this project.
The weight of Chinese vehicles
But it is especially in China, after the third oil shock of 2007-2008, that the liquefaction of coal is experiencing its greatest growth. Shenhua and Yitai, two of the biggest mining companies in the world, which operate mainly in Shanxi and Inner Mongolia, have massively launched into synthetic fuels. Almost non-existent in 2009, Chinese production reached 2 million tonnes per year (Mt/year) in 2010, 15 in 2017 and, according to the latest available statistics, 35 in 2019. By way of comparison, the Nazi synthetic fuels industry , with its 21 plants, produced only 2.3 Mt at its peak. If we add to this the 80 million tonnes of methanol produced in China from coal, we can estimate that between a fifth and a sixth of Chinese fuel comes from coal.
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