First Large-Scale E-Methanol Facility Ready to Deliver to Maersk And Other
The Kassø e-methanol facility in Aabenraa, Denmark, has been officially inaugurated and is ready to deliver e-methanol to key customers including Maersk. The facility, which was built through a partnership between European Energy and Mitsui & Co., is being billed as the world’s first large-scale commercial e-methanol facility.
Situated next to Northern Europe’s largest solar park—the 304 MW Kassø Solar Park—the facility integrates large-scale renewable power generation with carbon capture and utilization. By combining biogenic CO2 with green hydrogen produced on-site, the companies report that the facility manufactures e-methanol with up to a 97 percent reduced carbon footprint compared to fossil-based products.
The Kassø e-methanol facility is designed to support the direct decarbonisation of sectors that are otherwise difficult to electrify. The CO2 used in the production process will be captured from biogas plants and waste incineration. The plant has an annual production capacity of 42,000 tonnes.
“The start of operations at Kassø marks a major step forward in bringing Power-to-X technologies into real-world use,” said Knud Erik Andersen, CEO of European Energy.
The plant draws power from the solar farm and uses captured CO2 in its production (European Energy)
A.P. Moller – Maersk has contracted to be one of the first large users off taking e-methanol from the facility. It will be used to fuel the Laura Maersk, the company’s first containership capable of operating on methanol. The feeder operates in the Baltic/Scandinavia region, but so far has been using methanol, waiting for the supply of e-methanol to be developed at a commercial scale.
While the plant will have the largest commercial output, it will overall be small compared to demand. Maersk, for example, said the annual output would fuel one of its large methanol containerships for one trip between Europe and Asia. However, the smaller Laura Maersk requires 3,600 tons of fuel per year.
The e-methanol from the facility will also be used in industrial processes where fossil-based methanol has traditionally been standard. One such application is in plastics, where manufacturers aim to adopt more sustainable materials while maintaining safety and quality standards. The LEGO Group and Novo Nordisk are also offtakers of e-methanol from Kassø, using it to replace fossil methanol in the production of selected products.