• Germany has awarded €350m [$412.5m] in public support to a green hydrogen-based e-SAF project now planned for the PCK Schwedt refinery site in Brandenburg.
• The move ties aviation fuel decarbonisation directly to Berlin’s wider effort to stabilise a politically sensitive refinery still shaped by Rosneft ownership, federal trusteeship and regional job concerns.

Germany is putting serious public money behind a green hydrogen-based e-SAF project at the PCK Schwedt refinery, handing Enertrag and Zaffra-backed Concrete Chemicals €350m [$412.5m] in state support for a plant designed to produce synthetic aviation fuel from renewable hydrogen and captured CO₂.

The project had previously been planned near Berlin, but is now set for the industrial park around the PCK refinery near the Polish border, a site that has become a strategic headache for Berlin since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Germany’s subsequent intervention in Rosneft-linked energy assets. Enertrag says the project will produce 30,000 tonnes of e-SAF and 7,000 tonnes of e-naphtha per year, using biogenic CO₂ and renewable hydrogen through a power-to-liquid process.

The funding package is split between the federal government and Brandenburg, with €245m [$288.7m] coming from the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy and €105m [$124m] from the state. The wider project is valued at about €500m [$589.3m], with final investment decision expected by the end of 2027 and production targeted for 2030. The developers plan to source CO₂ from local paper producer LEIPA, while hydrogen supply is expected to be linked to Germany’s emerging hydrogen infrastructure, including future pipeline connections.

Schwedt is one of Germany’s most politically sensitive energy locations. The refinery supplies large parts of northeastern Germany and Berlin with gasoline, heating oil and kerosene, and its roughly 1,200 employees have faced years of uncertainty since Germany placed the Rosneft-majority-owned refinery under federal trusteeship in 2022. On May 11, 2026, the German government also extended employment guarantees for PCK workers by six months, now covering them until the end of 2026.

"With the extension of the job guarantee, we are providing prospects and security," Federal Minister for Economic Affairs Katherina Reiche said. "We want to strengthen Schwedt in the long term, secure industrial value creation, and create new opportunities for the region."

Reiche visited the refinery as Berlin tried to show that Schwedt has a future beyond emergency energy management. "Schwedt stands for industrial strength, security of supply, and the cohesion of an entire region," she emphasized. The message is clear enough: Germany does not want PCK to become a stranded fossil asset, but it also cannot pretend that the transition will happen without public money, political management and long-term industrial planning.

“The employees of PCK make a crucial contribution every day to ensuring the energy supply in northeastern Germany – under conditions that remain challenging. Therefore, it is clear: the federal and state governments stand by the site,” said the Minister of Economic Affairs.

The e-SAF project gives Schwedt a cleaner-growth story at a time when the refinery’s legacy oil role remains exposed to geopolitics. Europe’s ReFuelEU Aviation rules are pushing airlines toward higher shares of sustainable aviation fuel, and Germany wants domestic production capacity rather than relying only on imports. But the economics remain hard. E-SAF needs cheap renewable power, steady CO₂ supply, large-scale electrolysis and offtake confidence from airlines that are already under cost pressure.

BMWI Minister, Katherina Reiche, said, “What matters now is to permanently stabilise the energy supply at PCK and in the region, to strengthen growth potential in a targeted way, and to stimulate new investment.”

She claimed the relocated SAF project “combines industrial strength with innovation, opens up new value chains, and creates long-term prospects for employment, prosperity, and energy security.”

Source:  Fuel Cells Works