Green Geely
While methanol as a fuel is not the singular answer to the planet’s energy challenges, it undoubtedly has a promising part to play.
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Daily TribuneWhile methanol as a fuel is not the singular answer to the planet’s energy challenges, it undoubtedly has a promising part to play.
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Geely’s efforts with the methanol-powered Emgrand continue to evolve and the latest version, built in the brand’s Guiyang factory, has just begun service in the fleet.
Photograph courtesy of Geely
In 2020, more than 50 countries around the world signed an agreement to reach carbon neutrality by 2050. The success of their efforts may come to define the 21st century and even the future of life on our planet.
Geely’s work with the production of “green methanol” takes us back to 2015 when they invested in a little-known Icelandic company called Carbon Recycling International. Based just outside of Reykjavik, CRI had been looking at ways to make productive use of the naturally produced carbon dioxide created by the island’s volcanic activity.
By capturing the carbon dioxide and combining it with hydrogen, produced via electrolysis at the CRI plant using renewable energy, CRI was able to produce green methanol as a fuel, taking a waste product that would enter the atmosphere of its own accord and repurposing it.
The success of this program impressed Geely enough to bring the technology back to China where they constructed the country’s first carbon dioxide-to-methanol recycling plant in Anyang. However, rather than using volcanic activity to generate carbon dioxide, Geely instead looked to tackle the more prominent issue of carbon emissions from heavy industry, with a view to preventing them from entering the atmosphere at the source.
Heavy industry is one of the planet’s largest polluters and, while many different efforts are being taken to reduce the impact the different production methods have on the environment, some things are not easy to make cleanly. With carbon capture technology, Geely can take that waste carbon dioxide from heavy industry before it enters the atmosphere and repurpose it as a different, cleaner burning fuel, methanol.
