CO₂ from the air: “You Don’t Have to Reinvent the Wheel”

(0:00–0:43)

Simone Wilson

The technology to extract CO₂ from the air and turn it into feedstocks for climate-neutral fuels already exists. But there is a decisive step between a good idea and an industrial plant. What works in the laboratory has to become reliable, maintainable and economical in continuous operation. Suddenly, very traditional industrial issues take centre stage: materials, components and gaskets.

Innovation is fast, but is industry fast too? And how do new technologies make the leap from the laboratory to industrial scale? That is what we are discussing today on the IDT podcast, with new perspectives and fresh ideas for industry and sealing technology.

(0:49–1:44)

Simone Wilson

Joining me in the studio is Tobias Keitel, Chief of Technical Staff at Greenlyte Carbon Technologies here in Essen. He is responsible for developing and industrialising the electrolysers. Hello Tobias, it is lovely to have you here.

Tobias Keitel

Hello, and thank you for inviting me.

Simone Wilson

My name is Simone Wilson. I am CEO of the gasket specialist IDT, and I will be guiding you through today's conversation. Just to explain: Tobias and I use the informal form of address in German. That happened naturally in our preliminary conversations, and it fits both our company cultures, so we are keeping it today.

Tobias Keitel

Absolutely.

Simone Wilson

Greenlyte is a start-up from Essen, but people outside that particular world may not really know it yet. Before we talk about the company, I would like to hear a little about you.

(1:45–5:50)

Simone Wilson

I know from our previous conversation that this is already the second start-up you are scaling. How do you become a repeat offender in this business?

Tobias Keitel

Good question. To give you some background, I am a mechanical engineer and studied automotive engineering. I always assumed I would work in the automotive industry. I geared my whole degree towards it, worked at Daimler in various internship and working-student roles, and got to know different departments. I stayed there until the end of my studies.

But I also had my first start-up experience while studying. Do you remember Foodora, the food delivery service with the pink branding? I joined very early as a working student and helped build up its operation in Cologne. That was its second location after Munich, and I was one of the first people there. I was in my first semester, very young and with little professional experience. Suddenly I was learning how to create a lot from nothing.

When I left a year and a half or two years later, we had around a hundred riders on the streets in the evenings. When I started, we had not received a single order. I think I delivered the first order myself. That was a great experience, but I was still interested in automotive engineering and continued doing a lot at Daimler.

Towards the end of my studies, I met people setting up a company, a spin-off from Daimler. This was during the fuel-cell and hydrogen hype around 2019 and 2020. Plug Power was a major player and suddenly had an enormous stock-market valuation. I had worked with Plug Power equipment at Daimler, looked at it and thought there was a lot of room for improvement. Yet it seemed to be a huge success story, although that later turned out differently.

I met people who saw the same potential and said, let's do something with it. They founded a business in Stuttgart, initially within Mercedes. Mercedes then decided to sell everything, and they asked whether I wanted to join. I became one of the first employees and helped build it from scratch. I worked there for four years.

Again, at the beginning we had no product, just some ideas from Daimler. By the end, our fuel-cell systems were operating in real industrial intralogistics applications, meaning forklifts for people unfamiliar with the term. Daimler and BMW were among GLOBE Fuel Cell Systems' customers. The equipment we built is now running in BMW plants in Leipzig and Regensburg, for example.

After a while, I wanted to see something different. It had been interesting and intense, but the fuel-cell market had not developed as we, or I, had hoped. It became increasingly difficult to operate in a market that was not really there, offering excellent products as answers to questions that perhaps were not being asked as much as we thought.

I had an opportunity to change direction and came into contact with Greenlyte, where the situation is different. I also switched sides, from consuming hydrogen and generating electricity to producing hydrogen, combined with the Direct Air Capture approach. That is how I ended up at Greenlyte.

(5:51–7:17)

Simone Wilson

Creating something from nothing is fascinating. I once read that Germany is a world champion in incremental innovation, always improving things a little. But your story does not sound purely incremental, and you are surely not the only example. It sounds more like creating something new from nothing.

Tobias Keitel

That is true, and at Greenlyte it is even less incremental. At GLOBE, the fuel-cell technology already existed. We simply approached it differently. At Greenlyte, and we will come back to how established industry can help, we follow a similar principle: use as many existing components as possible and think about them differently. We believe that gets us further, faster, than reinventing every wheel.

Simone Wilson

Turning things upside down and putting the puzzle together differently.

Tobias Keitel

Exactly. Sometimes things have become fixed in people's minds, and it helps to ask why they have to be that way. Could we solve the problem differently? You usually find a route and realise that something can be simpler. So I think both descriptions are true.

(7:19–12:29)

Simone Wilson

Before we return to your specific role at Greenlyte, could you briefly explain the company for people unfamiliar with it? What is Greenlyte, and what does it do?

Tobias Keitel

Greenlyte is essentially an energy company. Our origins are in Direct Air Capture, which is the core of our technology. In very basic terms, we need large industrial plants that you could picture as vacuum cleaners. We draw in air and remove about half of the CO₂ in the air passing through. We have developed a process to desorb that CO₂ again and recover it in gaseous form. That is the broad explanation.

I brought a demonstration object, a five-litre beer keg. We cooperate with Gaffel, Stauder and another brewery [name unclear in the automatic transcript]. That is not our business model; we did it more as a marketing idea to show what you can do with the technology. The drinks industry uses CO₂. There is CO₂ in the sparkling water on the table, too.

Simone Wilson

Carbonated?

Tobias Keitel

Exactly. The CO₂ used to fill this keg comes from our test plants in Essen.

To explain the process in more detail, we distinguish between absorption and desorption. The special feature of our technology is that we can run them independently. Absorption takes place in towers that continuously absorb CO₂. Bicarbonate crystals form, and we have developed a way to store them, either as crystals or dissolved in water.

We can then carry out the next step whenever electricity is inexpensive. The absorption step is essentially chemical. It only needs some pumping power for the liquid and some fan power, so it consumes very little energy.

The energy-intensive part is releasing the CO₂ and hydrogen from the bicarbonate again: desorption. As mentioned at the beginning, this is increasingly my area of responsibility. It involves a special three-chamber electrolysis process. We break down the bicarbonate and obtain CO₂ in the middle chamber, alongside the hydrogen that you would normally obtain from electrolysis.

Simone Wilson

You have been around for four years now?

Tobias Keitel

Exactly. It is our birthday in September: four years of Greenlyte.

Simone Wilson

Congratulations. I have read a little about you. I would not necessarily say your focus has shifted, but first the emphasis was on climate, then on e-fuels, and now on resilient fuels. Perhaps it has become more clearly defined rather than shifted?

Tobias Keitel

Absolutely. If you look at how the Direct Air Capture sector began, the idea was that there is too much CO₂ in the air. We could try emitting less, but over perhaps the last twenty years it has become apparent that people still want to fly on holiday and do other things. So we need technical approaches as well, and Direct Air Capture is one answer to removing CO₂ from the air.

But it is relatively expensive, and it has turned out that few people are willing to pay simply to have CO₂ taken from the air and stored. That was already apparent before Greenlyte was founded. From the start, we were explicitly not pursuing Carbon Capture and Storage, CCS, but Carbon Capture and Utilisation: reusing what we capture.

That has always been clear. The mood four years ago may have been different, but today simply saying we are green and store CO₂ is not enough. The resilience case has now been added. Companies and countries see what happens around the Strait of Hormuz and ask what would happen to their fuel supplies in a crisis. That could become critical. Answers are needed, and we are trying to provide one.

Simone Wilson

That is an important distinction: you are not just extracting CO₂ from the air. You want to provide something useful with it.

(12:29–13:14)

Tobias Keitel

Exactly. Our technology is not designed simply to remove CO₂ and store it as efficiently as possible. It could do that, but it would not make much sense for our approach. We focus on recovering CO₂ and the H₂ we co-produce in gaseous form, using as little energy as possible, and making them available as feedstocks.

There are different routes those feedstocks can follow. We see the largest market in e-fuels, but we can supply other applications as well. We can even fill beer kegs.

Simone Wilson

You can fill beer kegs and have a party. Happy birthday!

Tobias Keitel

Exactly.

(13:17–26:12)

Simone Wilson

Let's talk about your development journey. I believe you have had an integrated plant in Duisburg since November 2025. The next step is the first commercial plant, at the Marl Chemical Park. That is the scaling stage and a demanding phase: a sophisticated technology must become an actual plant, larger and more complex, yet economical to operate. The start-up world has a term for this, the valley of death. Do you emerge from it or remain at the bottom? What changes between your pilot plant and the next stage?

Tobias Keitel

We actually already operate two pilot plants. To start at the beginning, we have a fairly large site in Essen with a big hall containing many small test rigs. We divide the overall process into individual parts, carry out basic research and can operate just the stack or small absorption towers to test particular process steps.

Outside, in our yard, we have a very small but fully integrated plant. That lets us learn how the whole integrated process operates on a small scale: a maximum of five tonnes of CO₂ per year. It sounds like a lot, but it is very little.

The Duisburg plant handles forty to fifty tonnes, roughly ten times as much. It is the second, larger integrated plant and was built to industrial standards, although it still only occupies a site of perhaps ten by ten or twenty by twenty metres. We own and operate it ourselves. It is a partnership with ZBT, which kindly provided the location, but everything we do there remains our responsibility.

Marl is the next major step. We know that our technology can work. Now we have to build it at the scale of the modules we would use in a very large commercial plant. For absorption, we are building one tower initially, with three planned. The first should already be visible there at the end of the year. That is essentially the final size of the module. A much larger plant would then involve numbering up: a hundred towers instead of one.

We take a similar approach to electrolysis. The cells installed in Marl need to have the final dimensions, output and performance. A large plant would then contain three thousand or ten thousand cells, depending on its overall size, rather than one.

In my view, that step is especially interesting. You can develop an idea in the laboratory very quickly. Sometimes we have an idea at the start of the week and demonstrate in the laboratory that it works by the end of the week. That is fun and fast, but it does not mean it will work a thousand or ten thousand times over. Personally, I find this scaling step even more exciting than setting something up for the first time. It is the difficult problem you ultimately have to solve.

Simone Wilson

The way you described it still sounds deceptively simple: a bigger tower and so on. But it is not that straightforward. What exactly is difficult?

Tobias Keitel

Small systems are easier to handle. Take the example of distributing a liquid in a large tower. We need an even liquid distribution so that CO₂ is captured evenly, without hotspots. You demonstrate that at laboratory scale, and then suddenly you are building an absorber about ten by seven metres. That brings very different challenges.

Running something in a laboratory is also different from running it outdoors. Weather conditions enter the picture. In Marl, we are no longer just working on our own site: there are requirements from the site owner and regulations. Many additional factors come into play. Building a large plant is always substantially more complex than putting together a small one.

Simone Wilson

As you described moving from something that works in the laboratory to increasingly larger equipment, I wondered whether there have been any “oh shit” moments: things you did not anticipate at all, leaving you asking how to solve them?

Tobias Keitel

If we meet in a year and look back, there will certainly be plenty. Honestly, those moments happen every day. I can give a good example from electrolysis. We have cells measuring two by two centimetres, on which you can validate all kinds of technical ideas. Then you gradually increase the cell size.

Pressure is force per area. On a small area, it is relatively easy to handle and the energies are smaller. On a large area, it suddenly becomes difficult. A cell can break, or a gasket that worked extremely well on the small scale can fail.

The larger things become, the more complex the challenges. I have those moments every week. Part of working in a start-up is developing resilience and accepting that things break and not everything is easy.

Simone Wilson

I suppose the skill is then getting out of that situation and finding a solution as quickly as possible.

Tobias Keitel

Absolutely. The good thing about how we work is that we sit down again and ask what happened and why something broke. It is fantastic to see new solutions emerge. Sometimes, though, you run into the same kind of problem five times and only find the solution on the sixth attempt.

We also have to remember that, with three-chamber electrolysis, we are taking on something for which there are not many comparable examples. You cannot always ask someone else for help. Sometimes you have to work your way through a painful learning process yourself.

Simone Wilson

You touched on your working process. Milestones ultimately secure funding, so you operate at a different pace from what we usually experience in established industry. How does that fit together? You still need industrial partners. How do you come together?

Tobias Keitel

One reason we are fast is that we are a group of young, motivated people who want to make a difference and feel that what we do has an impact. But a large part of the truth is also that a start-up does not have unlimited money. You cannot simply say, that was unfortunate, we lost a hundred thousand euros, but someone will pay and we will carry on.

Everyone working at a start-up feels that their contribution matters and that they share responsibility for using the money sensibly. The money is limited; it will not last forever. We have to demonstrate milestones quickly so that new funding comes in.

We are mainly financed by venture capital. Investors want less PowerPoint and more evidence of progress. Why should they give us more money? Why should they believe we will reach the next major milestone in a year? We constantly have to show progress, such as going from a two-by-two-centimetre cell to half a square metre or one square metre of cell area. That makes an impression.

Simone Wilson

But I would have to keep up with that using my established technology, processes and possibly my gaskets. How does that work?

Tobias Keitel

Very well, actually. We do not do everything ourselves. There is very little we do completely on our own. We have lots of ideas, but at Greenlyte we currently focus very strongly on partners. We did that at previous companies as well, but in our present phase it is particularly important.

We feel we cannot progress as effectively without partners. Of course we could continue alone, but we believe we will reach the goal faster by working together: a robust technology for which someone can offer guarantees, saying that they guarantee its performance and will finance it.

We believe that works well with partners. For the various parts of our process, we seek suitable partners, sometimes very large ones. Our absorption towers, for example, are essentially cooling towers. Why should we become the next cooling-tower company? We approach cooling-tower manufacturers and ask whether they would like to develop the equipment with us. What can we adopt from their established technologies? What remains as Greenlyte's core technology and our own contribution?

It is similar with electrolysis. There is not just one company involved. We approach manufacturers of two-chamber electrolysers and say that we think a third chamber could be integrated into their equipment. Would they be interested? The challenge of building that third chamber mainly involves plastic and gasket components. We do not make those ourselves either. We approach partners like you and say that we believe you could help. That is how it works.

Simone Wilson

So you work in a highly collaborative way, within the company and across company boundaries.

Tobias Keitel

The company was founded in 2022, principally by Florian Hildebrand, our CEO. He had run a company before and wanted to do something different in climate tech. He founded Greenlyte and brought in Niklas Friederichsen as CTO. They built it together.

The first two years were very much about proving the technology in the laboratory, taking the university idea developed in Duisburg and showing that it could operate reliably in the integrated plant in our yard. Once that worked, the next step was to demonstrate it on a larger scale in Duisburg.

Since the end of 2025, as you mentioned, the question for us has been how to take this path with partners. We want not just something that works in some form, but something robust, with reliable performance that we can guarantee.

Simone Wilson

What is your specific timetable for Marl? You said a tower should be standing by the end of the year?

Tobias Keitel

A little more than just a tower, although for absorption it is one tower. We want as much as possible to be physically built by the end of the year so that we can commission it in the second quarter of next year. From Q2, we want to collect the first operating data.

Of course, deployment and development are different things. Development is always already working on the next projects.

Simone Wilson

I would still like to shift the focus back to gaskets. We make a component that tends to attract attention when it does not work.

(26:15–27:29)

Tobias Keitel

Absolutely.

Simone Wilson

When do you start thinking about parts like that during development? When do you bring partners on board who are real specialists? Specifically, when did you realise that the gasket might be important?

Tobias Keitel

You notice very quickly when you are working with media and pressure: water, hydrogen, CO₂ or chemical liquids that you really do not want leaking out. We encounter that every day and work with many partners at different levels.

We build piping systems with flange gaskets and O-rings. We use all kinds of gaskets, including very large ones for special applications such as a stack. If we build stacks or cells with areas of two to three square metres and a gasket all the way around the edge, that is not a standard item on the market. You need a partner who says they have an idea for making it work. Apart from perhaps software, gaskets touch almost every aspect of what we do.

(27:31–31:13)

Simone Wilson

But you probably do not have your own gasket experts?

Tobias Keitel

We do not, and we do not need to. We do not have to invent new gaskets. Companies like yours have spent what feels like a hundred years working on them. Why should we use our limited time and money to invent an amazing new gasket ourselves? I do not think that would be productive.

Simone Wilson

As you say, for us it comes down to pressure, temperature, the medium and perhaps mechanical loads. It is relatively straightforward to define. Hydrogen is one medium, other substances are others, and they have to be sealed.

But you said in our preliminary conversation that the way you work, including how you rethink things, can make collaboration challenging. It requires particular kinds of partners. What does good collaboration mean to you?

Tobias Keitel

Finding a partner who can do something in principle is easy. Plenty of companies can make gaskets, and the same is true of other components. If I need a particular turned part, we are not going to buy a CNC machine for a hundred and fifty thousand euros. That would make no sense. We need a company we can work well with.

The difficulty is that established companies often say: if you want component X, send very specific requirements and a detailed description of what you need. In our case, we may sit together on Monday, have a promising idea by Friday and have an initial CAD model in between. The model is not perfect, there may be no finished drawing yet, perhaps only a STEP model.

You need a partner who is interested in working that way. I want to be able to call on Thursday and say: I have a rather unusual request. I will send a CAD model in a moment. Could you take a quick look and tell us whether you could do something like this, or whether we are completely on the wrong track?

Some companies cannot or do not want to work that way. They feel very uncomfortable with it. Others say: you are crazy, but I like the idea. Send it over and I will look at it.

Simone Wilson

How much time does finding that fit take? If your partners cannot work in the way you need, collaboration becomes very difficult. Is it hard to find the right match?

Tobias Keitel

For electrolysis, keeping in contact with partners is my job at the moment, and it is difficult. The fit has to work on many levels. A working relationship requires some trust.

I do not want to go into details about individual difficulties. But sometimes we struggle with parts that do not seem particularly complicated. Then we find someone who can make them and receive a quotation with a six-week lead time. They say six weeks is perfectly reasonable. We say that six weeks is an incredibly long time. An enormous amount can change in six weeks for us.

(31:14–31:43)

Simone Wilson

How do you resolve that internally? How do you make it work?

Tobias Keitel

It is not as though nobody can help. We do find companies with whom it works. It is just difficult to find them, and that takes time. We started bringing partners in early, and the partnerships sometimes change. You may eventually realise that someone is the wrong partner for the current phase.

(31:43–33:10)

Tobias Keitel

I am constantly working on it in my area, and we have good partners. But there could always be more.

Simone Wilson

Looking critically at established industry, if you could give our community three wishes, what would improve collaboration for you? What do you need specifically?

Tobias Keitel

First, do not see an imperfect enquiry as an affront. Understand that this is a company trying to involve a partner early so that it does not develop in the wrong direction.

In my experience, it is a serious problem if I spend a long time developing something until it is perfect, send it to a partner and then hear that it cannot be manufactured. I have wasted a tremendous amount of time.

Instead, I can bring the partner in very early, ideally sitting at the table with me. That is not always possible, of course, but you understand what I mean. The partner can then guide me from the beginning. That requires an investment, and I understand that it is difficult from the partner's perspective as well.

So one wish would be flexibility in handling requirements. Another is the response when something seems impossible. We often get an email saying, sorry, we cannot do that.

(33:10–34:02)

Tobias Keitel

Then, after five phone calls that I initiated, we discover together that they actually can. One requirement had made them think it was impossible. I ask what the problem is, and they point to component X. But that is not a problem: we are talking about five things, so let's leave that one out. I can source it elsewhere or do it myself. You can still help with the other four.

I would like us to move beyond that immediate “no, we cannot” response. As a start-up, you sometimes wonder whether companies have too much work. Is that why they react like this? Looking at the economic situation, you would not necessarily think so. A certain eagerness to find something they can offer would be wonderful.

(34:02–34:36)

Tobias Keitel

And then there is the big issue of lead times. It is always difficult, but very long lead times for parts can really hurt.

Simone Wilson

Listening to you, it sounds as though you are not actually looking for a product in the end. You are looking for development. There is someone who can manufacture that type of product, but perhaps not exactly what you need yet. Rather than ordering a product, you are setting out the boundary conditions and asking for help within them, even if the product does not exist yet.

(34:36–35:29)

Tobias Keitel

That is how I see it. Some start-ups do everything in-house. They also have more money available, which matters. That may be an ideal situation in some ways, but we see it differently, or have to see it differently.

We need partners. I could develop everything myself and then ask a partner whether they can make it, but I will often get a no. My approach is to come to you very early. That makes the collaboration dynamic, but it also gives you a chance to shape the solution so that it works for you.

Perhaps the partner can grow through the project as well, realising that a different tool would allow them to do something new.

(35:29–36:14)

Simone Wilson

Speaking from our perspective, the question of whether we want to support the business model probably plays a part too. I cannot judge that for everyone.

How often do you have to explain your case? When you make these enquiries, how frequently do you have to explain what Greenlyte is?

Tobias Keitel

Of course we do. It was easier when I worked at Daimler. You went somewhere, mentioned Daimler and people said, no problem. Now it is Greenlyte, and people ask who we are. In some cases, you are simply not important to them. I understand that; it does make a certain amount of sense.

(36:14–37:18)

Tobias Keitel

What I like to do is get in the car. We deliberately look for partners in the surrounding area because we strongly believe in meeting and discussing things in person, as we are doing today.

When there is a problem, we either visit the partner or invite them over. I have often experienced conversations in which people did not quite understand. Then they visit, see the equipment and suddenly say: now it makes sense.

It also helps to tell the story, and we have to do that. We cannot promise that we already have a billion-euro sales volume behind us. But we can explain why we believe it makes sense for a partner to get involved now, perhaps to reach that kind of opportunity in three years.

Simone Wilson

Now I will be a little demanding and ask you to look critically at your side. When you meet traditional industry, what could you do differently to help us understand you?

(37:18–38:45)

Simone Wilson

What could you change?

Tobias Keitel

As a start-up, we are sometimes too fast. It helps to specify things carefully and think them through thoroughly. That avoids errors, particularly when building a safe plant and developing safety concepts.

Established companies have much more experience in those areas and in dealing with authorities. They know what matters. We can learn an enormous amount about writing specifications and introducing requirements processes, as well as from their technical experience.

If I have a gasket application, I tend to see that one case. When I ask you or your team, you have perhaps fifty other similar applications in mind. That is precisely the knowledge I want to access. We have a great deal to learn from established companies.

Simone Wilson

I take that as a kind of grounding. If you are moving at running pace, it can be useful when an industrial partner puts the brakes on a little, making sure you are not heading in the wrong direction.

Tobias Keitel

Absolutely.

(38:45–40:34)

Tobias Keitel

Take the definition of technology readiness. We could stand here and say we have built a product at TRL 8. We can make that claim. Technology Readiness Levels were introduced by NASA to describe how mature a technology is.

But an industrial partner will look at it differently. In electrolysis, for example, they may have developed stress tests and validation procedures for their process that we do not yet have.

We can invent our own tests, but it helps to have an electrolysis partner who tells us which protocol to follow and how many start-stop cycles are required before we can speak of a validated technology. Those are the things that emerge through cooperation with an industrial partner.

Simone Wilson

Before looking ahead, I would like to return to the pilot and integrated plants to put the quantities into perspective. You said that you produce more now, but how do those amounts compare with the demand that exists or might exist when the material is ultimately used?

Tobias Keitel

Take the Duisburg plant. It can extract about forty tonnes of CO₂ a year if it runs reasonably well, with downtime and maintenance intervals taken into account.

(40:35–41:53)

Tobias Keitel

Using a rough figure of forty tonnes of CO₂ per year, you could make about ten tonnes of SAF from it. Now think about an Airbus. Consumption varies considerably between an A380 and an A320 and depends on the load. But take a smaller holiday aircraft flying to Mallorca and assume around two tonnes of fuel per flight hour, perhaps a little less or more.

At two tonnes per hour, the entire output of a Duisburg-sized plant would be gone after five flight hours. That does not change much.

Now take a plant handling fifteen hundred tonnes, roughly thirty times as much. Instead of ten tonnes of fuel, that would be around three hundred tonnes. Even that does not translate into many flight hours. To become truly relevant, we need very large plants producing something like a hundred thousand tonnes of SAF per year.

Simone Wilson

That would be your ambitious goal, together with a price that makes the fuel attractive?

(41:54–42:57)

Tobias Keitel

We do not want to think unrealistically big. We look at existing hydrogen projects. The largest hydrogen project is NEOM in Saudi Arabia, where The Line was also planned and the focus has shifted.

The Green Hydrogen Company there, together with thyssenkrupp nucera, has built what I describe as the world's largest electrolyser, with two gigawatts of installed capacity. That is an enormous scale, roughly thirty thousand cells.

When I talk about a cell covering a little over two square metres, imagine around thirty thousand of them. Those are estimates; the exact number is not known to us, but our calculations suggest that order of magnitude. If we built a comparable plant, we could obtain around a hundred thousand tonnes of SAF.

Simone Wilson

That would make a difference.

Tobias Keitel

It would make a difference. Definitely.

(42:59–43:50)

Simone Wilson

You are also getting support from regulation. Very recently, Germany, Austria and Luxembourg announced plans to provide more than two billion euros for the ramp-up of e-SAF. What does that mean for you and your future?

Tobias Keitel

First of all, it is very good news. As I said at the beginning, I came from the fuel-cell market, which experienced a huge boom, followed by the realisation that demand was not developing as expected. It is good to operate in an environment where the market exists, or at least appears to exist.

At the same time, we have to put it into perspective. A tonne of fossil kerosene costs less than a thousand dollars.

(43:51–44:40)

Tobias Keitel

Perhaps six hundred, depending on the fluctuations. It will be difficult for us to reach that price. Our market has two components. One is resilience, where the acceptable entry price is substantially higher, because in a defence situation people are willing to pay more for a litre of fuel.

If I asked the Bundeswehr whether two euros fifty was expensive, they might say that if it is produced here, they would even be willing to pay more.

Simone Wilson

Because of availability and security of supply?

Tobias Keitel

Exactly. In a crisis, they need those fuels. We are also represented in the GigaPtX consortium, which addresses precisely that issue.

(44:40–45:13)

Tobias Keitel

The vision is to build more than two hundred plants across Europe to supply European countries with fuel. Fuel from those plants will not cost two euros a litre. It will logically be more expensive, which is not necessarily a problem because the military does not need the same quantities.

That is one market where a relatively high price can be justified. The other involves the regulations you mentioned. Of course, regulations are made by people.

(45:13–46:20)

Tobias Keitel

They can be reversed, although we hope they will not be. If they come into force, that is excellent. From 2027, I believe something over one per cent of e-SAF will have to be blended in. That would define the market: flights departing Germany would need a certain SAF share, and the question would be where it comes from.

We are in close contact with airlines and also have offtake agreements. Lufthansa and TUI fly, for example, discuss the price at which they would be willing to buy the fuel.

That price is higher than the fossil-fuel price, partly for the same reason: fossil prices fluctuate greatly. If they know that they can obtain fuel reliably, regardless of crises, they are willing to pay a certain premium.

But that also depends on regulation. I do not think anyone would use e-SAF simply because the weather is nice. We need those rules. So every announcement of that kind is good news for us.

(46:21–47:17)

Simone Wilson

That gives us a useful picture of three things working together: companies like yours, start-ups developing new technologies; established industry, contributing its know-how; and suitable regulation, allowing what is developed to establish itself in the market and generate demand.

Tobias Keitel

One hundred per cent. Technically, we will not get there alone unless a huge amount of money suddenly allows us to do everything in-house. Our clear message is that we need partners and want to involve them as early as possible.

On the other hand, we will not be able to beat fossil fuel at six, seven or eight hundred dollars a tonne in such a short time.

(47:17–48:23)

Tobias Keitel

So we depend on that framework, and the world needs it as well. We are not doing this just for fun.

Simone Wilson

Looking ahead, if we were sitting here in a year, where would you like Greenlyte to be? What would you like to tell us?

Tobias Keitel

A year is a very long time in the start-up world, and a lot can happen. With Marl, we now have a major project that takes us beyond experimenting in the laboratory. Around ninety per cent of the set-up is fixed. We are saying: this is what we are going to build.

If I can sit here next September, show the first operating data and say that we are meeting our assumptions, I will be very pleased. We have carried out a substantial techno-economic analysis of process costs and energy efficiency. If I can show that theory and practice are close on a relevant scale, that would be a good outcome.

(48:24–49:07)

Simone Wilson

Would that mean you had left the start-up stage behind?

Tobias Keitel

It is always an interesting question: when does a start-up stop being a start-up? We now have more than eighty people, work with established companies on the technical side and build projects worth many millions. Are we still a start-up? I cannot give a definitive answer.

Simone Wilson

Once you earn money, you stop being a start-up?

Tobias Keitel

It depends. On some days, I think we are very much a start-up. On others, we are dealing with a thousand regulations for the plant and doing risk assessments, and it does not feel like one at all. It is more of a feeling or a culture. I hope some of that start-up spirit stays.

(49:07–50:08)

Tobias Keitel

We need that spirit to bring some lightness into the work. Even with a very dry subject, such as a HAZOP workshop lasting several days, you can ask how to run it in a way that fully meets regulatory requirements while making the work more enjoyable and helping people feel that their contribution matters.

I do not want to leave that start-up culture behind. Technically, though, I would say we have already left that stage, or are leaving it now.

The plant after Marl will not immediately be a NEOM-sized project. We are very aware of that. At least one intermediate step is needed: a substantially larger plant that makes real commercial sense. We are currently working to find such a project. When we build that plant, perhaps we will finally be beyond the start-up stage.

Simone Wilson

Very cool.

(50:08–50:47)

Simone Wilson

Whatever happens with the start-up spirit, one thing is certain: if we sit here again next September, we can celebrate your fifth birthday. Perhaps there will be a new beer as well?

Tobias Keitel

We produce CO₂ every day, and we are happy to provide it. It comes out of our process at food-grade quality.

Simone Wilson

Then there will be birthday beer.

Tobias Keitel

Absolutely.

Simone Wilson

Thank you very much. It has been a fascinating conversation, including the insights into your work, your company's work and how you are navigating this journey. It has certainly been interesting for me, and I hope for our listeners too.

(50:48–51:43)

Simone Wilson

We began with a question: innovation is fast, but is industry fast too? I do not think there is a simple yes-or-no answer. What I take away is that it requires a particular kind of collaboration and mutual understanding. It is often at the interfaces that we determine whether technological innovation becomes industrial reality. Different participants have to contribute.

Thank you for listening. Stay connected, and join us next time on the IDT podcast for new perspectives and fresh ideas in industry and sealing technology. Thank you very much.

Tobias Keitel

My pleasure. Have a lovely day.