Maersk venture capital arm continues organisation’s concerted push to firmly establish a maritime methanol supply chain
Maersk Growth, the venture capital arm of container shipping goliath AP Moller-Maersk, has put funding behind Berlin-based green fuel technology start-up C1.
Maersk Growth joins other seed-stage investors in the start-up, which is aiming to lower the cost of methanol production.
C1 said it has invented an ’ultra-efficient catalysis’, the process of adding a catalyst to speed up a chemical reaction, that will produce green methanol from either waste biomass (leftover organic matter from human or animal waste or agriculture, food, industry or municipal waste processing) or the combination of carbon dioxide (CO2) and hydrogen (H2).
The company said its technology will "enable green methanol to become cost competitive" and to be mass produced.
The combination of increasing production of low-carbon methanol at a lower cost would be ideal for Maersk, which announced a contract to build at least a dozen box ships capable of running on green methanol in August 2021 and has since increased its commitment to total nearly 20 vessels. The first are scheduled for delivery in about a year, during Q1 2024.
Since its decision to build the potentially carbon-neutral vessels, and as the company has increased its green methanol newbuild vessel commitment, Maersk has also invested heavily in building a methanol supply chain for its vessels. In December, the company signed its ninth agreement for renewable methanol supply. Notably, many of the agreements have included funding that essentially enables green methanol production companies at early stages of development to build facilities, with Maersk often committing to cover full offtake of green methanol supplies once production has begun.
In spite of the company working to establish multiple strategic partnerships around the supply of green methanol, Maersk still lists fuel availability, supply levels and price as primary challenges for its plans to decarbonise.
"The availability of green energy and fuels in sufficient quantities and at cost-competitive price levels remains the main challenge for the decarbonisation of global shipping. Maersk alone needs approximately 6M tonnes of green methanol per year to reach its 2030 milestone fleet emissions target and even larger amounts by 2040 for its fleet to reach net zero," Maersk said in late 2022.
Maersk has calculated the 19 vessels capable of running on green methanol that are scheduled to be in operation in coming years will require approximately 750,000 tonnes of green methanol annually.
To achieve the promise of increased supply of green methanol at a lower price point, Maersk’s latest investment recipient C1 has designed a ’containerised’ reactor the company said is "currently in the pilot stage". The containerised reactor, it is claimed, would make production of green methanol possible within reach of the ports where Maersk’s vessels would need to access the fuel.
“With current technology, powering our vessels with green methanol will be much more expensive. We believe in C1’s ultra-efficient catalysis to bring down the price – and scale fast with their decentralised approach,” Maersk head of future fuels innovation Maria Strandesen said.
According to C1, the company "develops new, climate-friendly chemical production processes by rethinking chemical reactions from the atomic level all the way up to the production scale. The chemical processes are designed with the help of quantum chemical simulations and implemented in proprietary production technologies. In doing so, the company develops and scales exclusively on the basis of renewable raw materials and energy. From the first steps in the development of a production process, all processes are designed to enable a closed carbon cycle. In this way, C1 supports industry on its way to net-zero".
Maersk joins existing investors in C1 that include seed-stage funding outfits Planet A Ventures and Square One Ventures and industry figures who include Siemens supervisory board chairman Jim Hagemann Snabe, and former Linde supervisory board chairman Professor Wolfgang Reitzle.
“Green methanol is the most promising way to drastically cut emissions from long-distance shipping at scale in the short term, and we see much traction in that space. We are really excited about C1’s cutting-edge scientific approach, reinventing every production step. Such a level of innovation and attention to detail is key to success, and we believe their technology can play an important role in decarbonising hard-to-abate industries, including shipping,” Maersk Growth partner Peter Votkjaer Jorgensen said.
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