Methane, whether green or black, is a potent greenhouse gas and multi-stage distribution is inevitably leaky. Not much reuse in the end.Īnd it fails the climate test as well.

Brand new ships would have to be engineered from the keel up, and brand new infrastructure for thermal and pressure management would have to be added to LNG terminals. And LNG ships tend to run on LNG boil off which won't exist in CO2 carrying ships. The entire idea fails the engineering test as well, as liquified CO2 is over twice as heavy for the same volume, must be pressurized to over five atmospheres, and has a thermal load problem as a result that LNG doesn't share. As green hydrogen requires firmed electricity, 24/7/365, that means roughly $100 / MWh electricity input, and so around $600 / MWh electricity in the receiving country. This idea isn't original to them, being something proposed for 'classic' LNG by oil and gas industry focused executives in the University of Houston, with the returned CO2 being used for enhanced oil recovery in the Permian Basin, of course.įortescue's variant fails the economic test, as delivered electricity in overseas markets would be a maximum of a sixth of the green electricity used to manufacture the green methane, and so six times as expensive.

Green methane requires hydrogen and CO2 as feedstocks, so this is theoretically circularity. Recently, Fortescue Future Industries floated the idea of shipping green methane to overseas markets as LNG and shipping CO2 from its burning to generate electricity back in the same ships, using the same infrastructure.

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