July 11, 2025 [Renewables Now]- HIF Global has made engineering and design amendments to its project for a large-scale eFuels facility in Uruguay to improve its environmental and territorial integration while keeping the original investment scale, construction timeline, and job projections.

The revised layout reduces the facility’s footprint by 35%, thus decreasing the impact on the native forest and expanding the biodiversity reserve area to 260 hectares. The planned chimneys have been repositioned to reduce their visibility from the facility perimeter.

Despite the changes, the total planned investment remains unchanged at USD 6 billion (EUR 5.12bn), including USD 4 billion for the e-Fuels facility and USD 2 billion for the associated renewable energy parks.

Located in Constancia in the Paysandu Department, the eFuels project envisages the installation of 1.1 GW of electrolyser capacity and targets 700,000 tonnes of e-methanol production per year. The associated renewable assets include the 1,162-MWp Lucia solar park and the 1,137.6-MWp Elena wind farm, situated in El Eucalipto and Cuchilla de Fuego, respectively.

HIF Global launched the environmental permitting process in the first quarter of 2024, with the front-end engineering and design (FEED) starting in the following quarter. In May 2024, Johnson Matthey was picked to provide its methanol technology for the project.

HIF Global expects to begin construction works in the second half of 2026 and switch on the eFuels facility in 2029.