Norsk e-Fuel and Braskem: turning recycled CO₂ into plastics, one e-Naphtha barrel at a time

On 20 November 2025, Norsk e-Fuel and Braskem announced a strategic collaboration with an unfamiliar but important objective: to integrate e-Naphtha into the global plastics value chain. For anyone tracking how Power-to-X intersects with the chemicals industry, this is one of the more concrete announcements of recent months – less spectacular than a new electrolyser, but arguably more transformative for what it implies about the future of plastics.

The pairing: Power-to-Liquid meets a global polymer producer

Norsk e-Fuel is a Norwegian Power-to-Liquid (PtL) developer founded in 2019 with a focus on industrial-scale synthetic fuel production from renewable electricity, water and recycled CO₂. The company plans at least three plants operational by 2032, with a combined annual capacity exceeding 200,000 tonnes of e-fuels. About one quarter of that output – roughly 50,000 tonnes per year – could be supplied as e-Naphtha.

Braskem is one of the world’s largest polymer producers, headquartered in São Paulo, with 40 industrial units across Brazil, the United States, Mexico and Germany, and customers in more than 70 countries. The company already runs an industrial-scale renewable polyethylene line under its I’m green brand, made from sugarcane ethanol. Its sustainability strategy, framed as Keeping Carbon in the Loop, is built around retaining carbon in long-lived products rather than releasing it as combustion emissions.

What is e-Naphtha, and why is it interesting?

In conventional petrochemistry, naphtha is the light hydrocarbon fraction derived from crude oil refining. It is the dominant feedstock for steam crackers, which produce the olefins – ethylene, propylene, butadiene – that in turn feed the global polymer industry. Most of the plastics in everyday use begin life as fossil naphtha.

e-Naphtha is the synthetic equivalent: a naphtha-range hydrocarbon stream produced via Power-to-Liquid synthesis from recycled CO₂ and green hydrogen. Chemically and functionally, it behaves like fossil naphtha in downstream processing – which is what makes it interesting. Existing petrochemical infrastructure does not need to be replaced; it just needs to be fed differently. In a PtL e-fuels plant optimised for aviation kerosene or diesel, naphtha typically appears as a side stream of around 20 to 25 percent of total output. Norsk e-Fuel’s plans are consistent with that ratio.

Under the new partnership, Braskem will assess how to process Norsk e-Fuel’s e-Naphtha into polypropylene and related polymers. The work focuses on developing a framework for integration into existing manufacturing, evaluating market demand, and engaging customers – brands and converters – who are looking for plastics with substantially lower embedded carbon.

Why this matters: plastics as carbon storage

One of the conceptual shifts the partnership embodies is worth pausing on. In most public discussion, plastics appear as a pollution problem. From a climate perspective, plastics are also a carbon storage problem – carbon that originated as fossil CO₂ is locked into long-lived materials. If the carbon source is recycled CO₂ from biogenic sources or directly from air, durable plastics become a form of carbon utilisation in which the carbon may stay out of the atmosphere for decades.

This logic is not new. It is, however, only now becoming operationally feasible at industrial scale. Norsk e-Fuel’s e-Naphtha and similar routes – such as Synhelion’s solar-derived hydrocarbons – all point in the same direction: chemistry industries that were historically tied to the wellhead can be repositioned around recycled carbon. Whether they will actually relocate to follow renewable feedstock supply is one of the more interesting open questions of the decade.

Honest caveats

This is an exploration agreement, not a commercial offtake. The 200,000 tonnes per year target is for 2032 and is contingent on Norsk e-Fuel reaching final investment decisions on plants that have not yet been built. e-Naphtha production cost remains significantly higher than fossil naphtha and currently lacks a dedicated regulatory framework comparable to RFNBO for fuels – the EU’s Renewable Energy Directive treats Power-to-X chemicals more loosely than Power-to-X fuels, which complicates the policy support story.

It is also worth noting that the climate value of carbon-circular plastics depends critically on what happens at end of life. If the polymer is incinerated and the CO₂ released to atmosphere, the carbon was only temporarily detained. If the polymer is mechanically recycled or chemically depolymerised back to feedstock, the loop closes. The end-of-life infrastructure for that closure is partial at best in most markets.

SPIN Perspective

The Norsk e-Fuel and Braskem partnership illustrates a Power-to-X principle that Switzerland’s Power-to-X community has emphasised repeatedly: Power-to-X is not only about transportation fuels. The same molecules – syngas, methanol, light hydrocarbons – can route into materials, chemicals and durable products. For Switzerland, whose chemical and pharmaceutical sectors are economically significant and globally exposed, the implications are real. A future European petrochemical industry partially fed by renewable electricity and recycled carbon would reshape supply chains that the Swiss chemicals cluster connects to.

It will not happen automatically. The cost gap remains substantial. But the early collaborations are how new value chains are built, one offtake framework at a time. We will be watching this one.

Sources: Norsk e-Fuel, Chemical Engineering, Hydrocarbon Processing.