Swiss cleantech company and SPIN member Synhelion has, for the first time, fueled a construction excavator with its renewable synthetic diesel. The machine, operated by Swiss construction company Eberhard Bau AG, is in use at the Brüttener Tunnel construction site near Bassersdorf (Zurich). The deployment marks a tangible milestone for Swiss-made synthetic fuels in a sector that is notoriously difficult to electrify.

The renewable diesel was produced at Synhelion’s industrial DAWN plant in Jülich, Germany, which has been operating since 2024 and integrates the company’s full Sun-to-Liquid process chain. According to Synhelion, the fuel can reduce net CO₂ emissions by up to 100% compared with conventional fossil diesel, and works as a drop-in fuel in existing engines without modification. Starting in 2027, Eberhard plans to source larger volumes of Synhelion’s diesel on a regular basis.

A solution for machinery that is hard to electrify

Heavy construction equipment poses a particular challenge for direct electrification. Excavators, dumpers and other earth-moving machines have very high energy demands, work on rough terrain, and operate on sites with limited charging or grid infrastructure. For these applications, liquid fuels remain the most practical option in the short to medium term.

Renewable drop-in fuels — whether produced from concentrated solar heat as in Synhelion’s case, or from green hydrogen and captured CO₂ via Power-to-Liquid pathways — allow operators to reduce emissions immediately, using existing engines, tanks and supply logistics. As Silvan Eberhard, Head of Logistics at Eberhard Unternehmungen, puts it, what matters most on a construction site is performance and reliability — and that is precisely what renewable diesel needs to demonstrate in day-to-day operations.

Another real-world use case for sustainable fuels

The excavator deployment adds to a growing portfolio of Synhelion use cases that already span aviation (with SWISS as launch customer for solar jet fuel), maritime applications (a steamboat on Lake Lucerne with SGV), road transport, and ground operations at Zurich Airport. Each deployment is comparatively small in absolute fuel volumes, but each one tests the technology under real operating conditions and helps build the commercial and regulatory experience needed for scale-up.

“Machines in the construction and infrastructure sectors will continue to rely on liquid fuels for a long time to come,” says Philipp Furler, Co-CEO and Co-Founder of Synhelion. “Renewable fuels offer a realistic and immediately deployable solution to reduce emissions in this sector. To make a real contribution to net-zero emissions, it is now crucial to scale up our technology in order to bring down production costs.”

SPIN Perspective

For SPIN, the Eberhard–Synhelion deployment is a useful reminder of two things. First: the value of renewable synthetic fuels is most visible in segments where direct electrification or hydrogen-only solutions struggle — heavy construction, aviation, shipping, and parts of long-haul road transport. Solar fuels and Power-to-Liquid e-fuels are complementary, not competing technologies, and both will be needed.

Second: scale and cost remain the open questions. The DAWN plant is a demonstration-scale facility, and the first excavator tanking is, by design, a symbolic volume. The Swiss construction sector alone consumes vast amounts of diesel every year, and replacing even a meaningful fraction of that with renewable synthetic fuels will require significantly larger production capacity, supportive procurement policies, and price-competitive offtake agreements. The 2027 timeline for larger Eberhard volumes is a positive signal — but it is also a signal that the ramp-up will take years, not months.

SPIN welcomes initiatives like this one because they move the conversation from “Can it work?” to “How do we scale it?” — which is exactly where the Power-to-X ecosystem needs to focus next.

Source

Based on the Synhelion press release of 13 May 2026: Synhelion fuels first construction machine with renewable diesel.