Synhelion to supply solar fuel to power SGV ships
Lucerne/Lugano - Synhelion has signed a five-year offtake agreement for solar fuel with the Lake Lucerne Navigation Company (SGV), which operates passenger ships and boats on Lake Lucerne. The fuel will be sourced from a new production facility in Spain. This is set to commence operations in 2027.
The ships operated on Lake Lucerne by SGV will in future be powered by fuels generated via solar-powered production processes. To this end, the Lake Lucerne Navigation Company and the cleantech company Synhelion have signed a five-year offtake agreement, further details of which can be found in a press release. SGV will procure just under 100 tons of solar fuel per year to power its fleet.
This solar fuel will be supplied from RISE, Synhelion’s commercial production facility located in Spain, which is expected to commence operations in 2027 and will have a production capacity of 1,000 tons of solar fuel per year. RISE will produce renewable kerosene, diesel and gasoline.
SGV’s steamships were originally powered by coal and then later by fossil heating oil on their journeys across Lake Lucerne. With the solar fuels produced by Synhelion, SGV will be able to switch to renewable energy in the future without the need to make any adjustments to the marine engines. From 2027 onwards, SGV plans to operate its historic steamship Gallia entirely on the basis of Synhelion solar fuel.
«By signing an offtake agreement, SGV is directly supporting the scale up of our solar fuel technology and is a true solar fuel pioneer. This agreement proves not only the need for renewable fuels in the maritime sector, but also the huge emerging market for sustainable fuels», comments Philipp Furler, co-CEO and co-founder of Synhelion, in the press release.
Synhelion was spun-off from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETH) in 2016. In addition to its headquarters in Lugano in the canton of Ticino, the company operates branch offices in Zurich and the town of Jülich in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. In June 2024, Synhelion opened DAWN, the world’s first industrial solar fuel plant, in Jülich.
Schifffahrtsgesellschaft des Vierwaldstättersees (SGV) AG
