Australian company aims to use concentrated solar to make liquid fuels in Texas

Vast Renewables Ltd., an Australian developer of concentrated solar power technology, is working on a project in West Texas that would use mirrors to convert the sun's energy into marine or jet fuel, the company's CEO said in an interview.

If built, the solar generation facility would provide heat and power to a colocated refinery for the production of "green" methanol and sustainable aviation fuel, Vast CEO and Director Craig Wood said. The company said Oct. 29 that it had signed a development services agreement for the project with GGS Energy LLC, a subsidiary of US investment firm Glacier Global Partners LLC.

The proposal, called Project Bravo, aims to meet growing demand from shipping companies and airlines for low-carbon liquid fuels, Wood said. To do so, Vast plans to use concentrated solar to power an electrolyzer to produce hydrogen, which would be combined with waste CO₂ to make synthetic "e-fuels," primarily methanol. The chemical has been proposed as a diesel substitute for fueling boats.

Unlike photovoltaics (PV), concentrated solar does not generate electricity directly; it captures sunlight in the form of thermal energy. That heat may be converted into steam to spin a turbine to produce power, or it can be used directly in industrial applications, Wood said.

Clean energy experts say the technology has only proven feasible when deployed at a very large scale in desert-like climates. Meanwhile, concentrated solar has been priced out by PV, which has dominated the utility-scale solar market for the past decade.

But according to Wood, concentrated solar is undergoing "a bit of a renaissance" amid greater demand for electricity storage and zero-emission sources of process heat.

"The ability to provide continuous, very cheap heat, as well as dispatchable electricity to complement PV and wind and batteries on the electricity side, means that for the fuels applications in particular, solar-thermal's got a really interesting and quite prospective future," Wood said.

Projects under consideration

Vast is developing its first utility-scale concentrated solar power facility, referred to as the VS1 Solar Farm, with a capacity of 30 MW, in Port Augusta, South Australia. The company is poised to make a final investment decision by the end of this year on a nearby "solar methanol" demonstration plant, Wood said. If built, the Australian refinery would produce up to 7,500 metric tons of green methanol per year.

Vast is considering multiple development locations in the US, but Project Bravo is "definitely pinned in West Texas," Wood said. However, the company does not expect to make a final investment decision on that first US plant for another two to three years, he added.

Clean energy advocates have proposed several lower-carbon substitutes to standard marine and jet fuel, including low-carbon ethanol and e-fuels.

An even more readily available alternative is biogenic fuel, made from feedstocks like vegetable oil. "But the reality is, that's pretty much done; the production capacity for that is pretty much full," Wood said.

Given that supply constraint, along with growing consumer and regulatory pressure to reduce emissions, Wood expressed confidence in Vast's ability to secure an offtake deal to support Project Bravo.

"The focus on actually securing supply as those targets come closer is getting sharper each day," Wood said.