LanzaTech Global (NASDAQ: LNZA) has selected North Sea Port, Ghent, Belgium as the permanent site for the FLITE project — Europe’s first commercial-scale Alcohol-to-Jet Sustainable Aviation Fuel facility. The €500 million plant will produce 79,000 tonnes of SAF and 9,000 tonnes of renewable diesel annually, supported by EU Horizon 2020 funding. FEED is substantially complete. Environmental Impact Assessment scoping notification imminent. The site sits adjacent to ArcelorMittal’s Steelanol ethanol plant — providing co-located feedstock. This is not a feasibility study. Not a pilot. Not a promise. It is a confirmed site, secured financing, completed engineering and imminent regulatory filing. The project creates approximately 50 permanent jobs and 300 FTE during construction.

TotalEnergies announced on April 22, 2025 the addition of SAF production capacity at its Antwerp refinery via coprocessing — simultaneously processing biomass with conventional hydrocarbons. Initial capacity: 50,000 tonnes per year of SAF. Production started in 2025. Antwerp joins TotalEnergies’ four French SAF sites (Grandpuits 230,000 t/yr from 2026, La Mède, Normandie, Oudalle) as Belgium’s first TotalEnergies SAF production point. Combined Belgium capacity from these two projects alone: 129,000 t/yr — approximately 6.8% of the EU’s entire 2025 SAF mandate target, in one country.

The Port of Antwerp-Bruges, as part of the Antwerp@C consortium, is building a CO₂ pipeline cluster in Antwerp with a connection to Germany by 2030 and a subsea CO₂ highway to Norway for permanent geological storage. Fluxys holds a stake in the C Grid. This infrastructure has a direct e-fuels implication that is often overlooked: Power-to-Liquid e-fuels require CO₂ as a feedstock alongside green hydrogen. Belgium’s cement industry and steel production emit tens of millions of tonnes of CO₂ annually. A CO₂ pipeline connecting these emitters to future PtL plants provides a far cheaper alternative to Direct Air Capture (currently €400–1,000/tonne) — potentially reducing e-fuel production costs by €0.50–1.50/litre. The infrastructure is being built for CO₂ storage — but it is simultaneously the infrastructure that makes large-scale Belgian PtL e-fuel production economically viable.

The mosaHYc hydrogen pipeline (€110M, FID April 2024) will convert 90 km of existing gas pipelines to transport hydrogen between the Lorraine region of France and Saarland, Germany — commissioning planned for 2027. GRTgaz manages the French section (50 km); CREOS Deutschland the German section (40 km). Simultaneously, Fluxys is building hydrogen pipeline clusters at Antwerp (construction started 2025), connecting to the Netherlands at Zandvliet, with plans for Belgium-Germany interconnection by 2028. Belgium’s national hydrogen strategy targets 100–160 km of H₂ pipelines by 2026 and cross-border interconnections by 2028.

The strategic significance: Lorraine’s white hydrogen deposit (46 Mt estimated, REGALOR II drilling underway at 4,000m, January 2026) sits at the heart of this emerging H₂ corridor. If commercially exploitable, Lorraine white hydrogen flowing through mosaHYc and then via Belgian pipeline networks to Antwerp PtL plants would create the cheapest e-fuel production corridor in Europe. The infrastructure is being built now — regardless of the white hydrogen outcome.

At its March 2026 Strategy Day, Renault officially announced the futuREady strategy — including a new 800V RGEV medium 2.0 electric platform targeting up to 1,400 km of range with a range extender. Renault CEO Fabrice Cambolive confirmed: “We also think that if adoption is not as rapid as expected, perhaps you can complete this with some extensions like range extender or plug-in hybrid, and that’s what we are working on.”

The technology is already production-ready. Horse Powertrain — the joint venture between Renault and Geely — presented the Horse C15 at IAA Mobility 2025: an ultra-compact range extender system (50 × 55 × 27.5 cm) that integrates engine, generator, cooling and inverter into a single unit. It can be installed horizontally or vertically — in the front compartment or the rear — transforming an existing BEV platform into a range-extended EV with minimal modification. Crucially, the Horse system is explicitly designed to run on “gasoline, ethanol flex fuels, pure methanol or modern synthetic fuels” — including e-fuels. Horse Powertrain is already supplying its HR10 engine to Brazilian manufacturer Lecar for 12,000 units/year (2026 launch).

The standard comparison between EVs and e-fuel vehicles focuses on the energy cost per kilometre — and in this comparison, EVs win. But the total cost of ownership (TCO) analysis is more nuanced:

Europe imports approximately 85% of its transport fuel feedstocks from regions that are either geopolitically volatile or actively adversarial. The ongoing tensions around Iran — a key actor in the Strait of Hormuz chokepoint through which approximately 20% of global oil trade flows — are a structural reminder of this vulnerability. This is not a transient crisis: European energy import dependency has been structurally dangerous since before the Russia-Ukraine war demonstrated exactly what happens when a major European energy supplier weaponises supply. The lesson should have been learned.

E-fuels produced from domestic European renewable electricity, CO₂ captured from local industrial sources and green or natural hydrogen are — by definition — immune to Middle Eastern geopolitics. A litre of e-kerosene produced at LanzaTech’s future Ghent plant or INERATEC’s Frankfurt ERA ONE facility cannot be subject to an Iranian oil embargo, a Hormuz closure or a Gulf state production cut. This is not a climate argument. It is a defence and security argument that should resonate across the political spectrum — from Green parties to traditional conservatives and defence hawks alike.