This is a paid article which your subscription is allowing you to read.

The commercial logic behind the construction of a massive chemical plant in Hopefield, a small town roughly an hour from Cape Town located in an ecologically sensitive area, is driven by binding European Union (EU) and United Kingdom (UK) aviation fuel mandates that force airlines and fuel suppliers operating into European airports to purchase increasing volumes of purportedly green fuel over time.

These include a hydrogen-based fuel, which is produced by combining hydrogen with carbon dioxide. The process consumes vast amounts of electricity and water.

While these fuels are touted as “green”, the process of their production is anything but that, and is widely seen as an example of the phenomenon of greenwashing (when a company presents its products as being more environmentally friendly than they are).

The EU has adopted ReFuelEU Aviation, a regulation that forces aviation fuel suppliers at EU airports to increase the share of sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) in the fuel they supply. The EU target started at 2.0% in 2025 and rises to 70.0% by 2050. Based on recent EU jet fuel consumption levels of roughly 50 million tonnes a year, that would equate to about one million tonnes of SAF annually at the start of the mandate and around 35 million tonnes a year by 2050, assuming similar demand levels.

Within that overall SAF target, ReFuelEU Aviation also creates a separate and increasingly stringent requirement for synthetic aviation fuels. These fuels must make up at least 1.2% of aviation fuel supplied at EU airports by 2030, with the requirement increasing steadily to 35.0% by 2050.  This regulation artificially creates demand for millions of tonnes of these fuels every year, effectively guaranteeing a captured market for producers that can meet the regulatory standards.

The International Air Transport Association (IATA), which represents the global airline industry, has warned that this dynamic is already shaping artificial investment behaviour. It has said that relevant project announcements “seem to be driven primarily by the mandates in the EU and the UK rather than by project economics”. Willie Walsh, its director general, has also warned that current policy pathways are disconnected from supply realities, stating “there is no path to meet that outcome” when referring to the scale of these fuels required under net-zero targets.

Under ReFuelEU Aviation, the primary legal obligation sits with aviation fuel suppliers at European Union airports, not airlines. These fuel suppliers are required to ensure that a minimum share of the fuel they place into the market is greenwashed. If they fail to meet these requirements, they face financial penalties calculated as at least twice the price difference between conventional jet fuel and greenwashed fuel, multiplied by the volume of the shortfall.

Using the European Union Aviation Safety Agency’s 2024 reference prices, conventional aviation fuel was €734 per tonne and greenwashed fuel was €2 085 per tonne. On that basis, a supplier that missed its sustainable aviation fuel obligation could face a minimum penalty of about €2 702 for every tonne of shortfall, rising to nearly €8 000 per tonne.

Airlines also face penalties under the anti-tankering rule. Tankering is the practice of carrying extra fuel from one airport to avoid buying fuel at another airport. ReFuelEU Aviation requires aircraft operators to buy and load at least 90.0% of the yearly fuel they need at European Union airports.

Taken together, these measures create a binding purchasing system for high-cost greenwashed fuel.

The chemical plant at Hopefield has been justified as an effort to meet some of this artificial greenwashed fuel demand. It is designed to produce approximately 140 000 tonnes of fuel per year over a 25-year operating life.

Journalists James Myburgh and Marie-Louise Antoni have written on the damage that will be caused to the fragile Sout and Berg rivers, the Langebaan lagoon, related aquifers, and fynbos vegetation. The Common Sense has written about the same risks here, and has also covered the subject in its Talking Sense podcast here.

The chemical plant project is emerging as an important global case study of the dark side of net-zero ideology and shows how climate ideology in advanced economies creates policies that translate into vast economic and ecological damage in developing countries and emerging markets.