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Background, Aims and Scope.

E-fuels promise to replace fossil fuels with renewable electricity without the demand-side transformations required for a direct electrification. However, e-fuels' versatility is counterbalanced by their fragile climate effectiveness, high costs and uncertain availability. E-fuel mitigation costs are 800-1200 €/tCO 2 . Large-scale deployment could reduce costs to 20-270 €/tCO 2 until 2050, yet it is unlikely that e-fuels become cheap and abundant early enough.Neglecting demand-side transformations threatens to lock in a fossil fuel dependency if e-fuels fall short of expectations. Sensible climate policy supports e-fuels deployment, while hedging against the risk of their unavailability at large scale. Policies should be guided by a "merit order of end uses" that prioritizes hydrogen and e-fuels for sectors that are inaccessible to direct electrification.

We quantify the technical and environmental performance of clean hydrogen production (with CCS) by linking detailed process simulation with LCA.

No abstract