China is hosting commercial-scale methanol plants developed by Icelandic clean energy firm Carbon Recycling International, converting captured CO2 into fuel in a partnership seen as a model for global climate cooperation.
Omar Sigurbjornsson, director of Methanol Market Services at Carbon Recycling International, said the global methanol market is currently valued at around 100 million tons annually, with projections reaching 115.9 million tons by 2025.
Sigurbjornsson hopes Iceland’s cooperation with China, a world leader in renewable energy investment, will accelerate progress toward climate neutrality.
"China is an excellent place to start. They are fast moving. They are investing heavily into renewable energy sources, energy efficiency, and it's the world's largest market for methanol. And we can see from our experience coming from a small country with an abundance of renewable energy, we can have an impact by transforming this technology and applying it into different applications, different markets, where there is a real benefit and a scale potential that has an impact to help us meet our goals for climate neutrality and energy transition," he said.
China and Iceland released a joint statement on strengthening cooperation in geothermal energy and green transition, following a meeting between their presidents on Oct 14 in Beijing. Sigurbjornsson sees this new partnership helps build up each other's strength.
"It's quite positive, of course, for us to be seen as a valued partner in these matters. We think solving these large challenges that we have for energy transition and global climate change, we need to have cooperation. We need to have learning exchanges from both cultures and to sort of build on each other's strength to have a real impact," he said.
"Yes, we expect to be announcing some projects. There is already a project now under construction which we expect to start next year, which will be the first of its kind using wind power and biomass at a large scale, largest of its kind, and then we'll be using it for as an alternative fuel for ships, for container vessels that are transporting our materials between Asia and Europe for example," he said.
China welcomes Icelandic tech to convert CO2 into methanol at industrial scale
China welcomes Icelandic tech to convert CO2 into methanol at industrial scale
