Synhelion wins Aerosuisse Award 2022

Zurich, May 13, 2022

Synhelion is this year’s laureate of the Aerosuisse Award. With this award, Aerosuisse recognizes each year outstanding contributions to the Swiss aerospace industry. The solar fuel technology developed by Synhelion offers a solution to enable net-zero aviation.

Founded in 1968, Aerosuisse is an umbrella organization whose purpose is to protect the interests of the Swiss aerospace industry and to safeguard its livelihood. The Aerosuisse Award was created to recognize the great services rendered by individuals and legal entities to the Swiss aerospace industry. It is awarded once a year. This year, the award jury selected Synhelion to be the 17th laureate of the Aerosuisse Award. It is a great honor to receive this recognition for our efforts to contribute to a net-zero aviation sector by closing the fuel carbon cycle.

In his laudation, Rudolf Gerber, President of the Aerosuisse Award Jury, said that aviation is a key enabler of global mobility, especially over long distances. Therefore, the industry also shares responsibility for the use of limited, non-renewable resources, which it takes very seriously. He praised the innovation power of the aerospace industry, which has been a strong driver of technological development and was able to realize solutions within short time spans that many did not think possible. For successful innovation, the opposite of the status quo needs to be considered, as it may become possible thanks to new findings. With the idea of reversing the combustion process, researchers and students of ETH Zurich did exactly that, which led to the development of the breakthrough Sun-to-Liquid technology and subsequently to the foundation of Synhelion. Gerber continued: “We congratulate Dr. Gianluca Ambrosetti and Dr. Philipp Furler on the successful development of a unique solar technology for the carbon-neutral industrial production of synthetic fuels and hope that with Synhelion, they will achieve their goals of being able to cover half of Switzerland’s jet fuel consumption by 2030 and half of the European jet fuel consumption by 2040 with their solar fuel.”

Thomas Hurter, President of Aerosuisse and Swiss National Councillor added: “There are two reasons for mobility: economic and demographic growth. People want to travel, and aviation is part of this mobility. That’s why I’m very happy that we from the aviation sector are collaborating with you as synthetic fuel producer to ensure that travelling will also be possible in the future. Thank you for your great technology.”

Watch the video created for the event: Synhelion Aerosuisse Award 2022