Carsten Wolfering, M.Sc.
Head of Catalyst Supply Chain
C1 Green Chemicals AG
Berlin, Germany
Abstract: The closure of the Strait of Hormuz in early 2026 has once again exposed the fragility of Europe’s fossil-dependent chemical supply chains. At the same time, climate targets demand rapid decarbonization of industrial feedstocks and transport fuels. This article argues that green methanol – produced from renewable sources and via novel catalytic pathways – can address both challenges simultaneously: Reducing emissions while building strategic supply chain independence. It observes the regulatory landscape, including the European Green Deal, and identifies homogeneous catalysis as an enabler of modular, scalable European production. The article concludes that bridging the valley of death between laboratory and industrial scale requires not only policy instruments but individual courage from decision-makers across the value chain.
Introduction: The wake-up call
As of February 2026, the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow passage through which roughly 20% of the world’s oil and a significant share of global LNG and petrochemical trade flows daily, is effectively closed. The ongoing conflict between the United States and Iran created what analysts describe as the largest disruption to world energy supply since the 1970s oil crisis, and the largest in the history of the global oil market (1, 2). Oil and energy prices surged, global supply chains tremble, and as of this writing, 20,000 mariners remain stranded in the Persian Gulf (3). This is not a hypothetical scenario in a risk management workshop. This is today’s reality and a multidimensional nightmare. And yet, for Europe’s industry, the most alarming aspect should not be the crisis itself, but how predictable it was and how unprepared we are.
Beyond the acute crisis, there is a larger and more persistent challenge that is being overshadowed by the urgency of the moment: Man-made climate change. In late March 2026, while attention is on the Strait of Hormuz or the ongoing war in Ukraine, the World Meteorological Organization confirmed once again that greenhouse gas concentrations had reached an all-time high, with consequences that will persist for generations (4). In their latest report, the IPCC warned that global emissions between 2010 and 2019 were the highest in human history, and that the overall trajectory has not changed (5). The world does not pay enough attention to this impending problem anymore. But in contrast to politics, thermodynamics does not negotiate.
These two crises are rarely discussed together. But for Europe’s industries, they converge on the same point: The feedstocks and the energy we depend on.
The molecule in the middle
Few molecules illustrate this convergence as clearly as methanol does. Global production capacity exceeds 100 million tons per year, making it one of the world’s foundational platform chemicals: It is the starting point for formaldehyde, acetic acid, olefins, and an ever-growing list of downstream products (6, 7). The vast majority of the world’s methanol is produced from natural gas or coal, in centralized mega-plants and predominantly in regions that Europe has little control over (8).
Its role is expanding: The maritime sector is committing to methanol as a transition fuel towards defossilization, with major carriers including Maersk placing multi-billion-euro investments in methanol-powered vessels (9). In aviation, methanol is emerging as a key feedstock for the production of sustainable aviation fuel, as passenger numbers are expected to more than double by 2050 (10, 11). In the chemical industry, methanol-to-olefins routes are developing as an alternative to conventional naphtha cracking, the predominant production route in Europe (12, 13).
The question is not whether demand for methanol will grow. It will. The question is whether Europe will produce the green methanol it needs, or import it through the same chokepoints, from the same regions, with the same vulnerabilities.
The strategic question Europe must answer
On the regulatory level, Europe is not standing still: The European Green Deal commits to full carbon neutrality by 2050. Derived from this, the FuelEU Maritime regulation requires progressive greenhouse gas reductions, scaling from 2% in 2025 to 80% by 2050; ReFuelEU Aviation mandates a minimum share of sustainable aviation fuel at all EU airports, ranging from 2% in 2025 to 70% by 2050 (14, 15, 16).
The EU’s framework creates demand for green chemicals, but remains largely agnostic about where they are produced. If the continent meets its targets almost exclusively through imports, it will have decarbonized on paper while fully recreating the structural dependency that the Hormuz crisis has just once again exposed.
This is not an argument against trade. It is an argument for ensuring that a meaningful share of green chemicals production is located in Europe, built on European feedstocks, and integrated into European industrial value chains – creating jobs, building know-how, securing supply, and ensuring that the emerging market does not replicate the very dependencies it aims to overcome. Decarbonization and strategic autonomy must not be competing objectives.
The catalyst towards greener chemistry
Conventional methanol production is based on fossil raw materials, required in continuous and large volumes. Large-scale fixed-bed reactors operate at high temperatures and pressures, and economics dictates the process to work in centralized large-scale production. The heterogenous process has been optimized for over a century, but faces a fundamental limitation: The reaction is limited by equilibrium, resulting in low conversion and large recycle streams, adding significant energy demand to an already energy-intensive process (17).
You cannot engineer your way out of this: Thermodynamics does not negotiate. You need a different chemistry: A fundamentally different catalytic approach is required, and homogeneous catalysis opens exactly that path. It enables methanol synthesis at significantly lower temperatures and pressures, bypassing the equilibrium constraints that define conventional production. This is not an incremental improvement, but a new reaction pathway, enabling smaller reactors, decentralized plant designs, lower capital thresholds, and the flexibility to operate on distributed, renewable feedstocks.
Multiple pathways towards green methanol have been demonstrated, from biomass or waste gasification, to power-to-methanol. The challenge is not proof of concept, but scale (18).
C1 Green Chemicals is at the forefront of this challenge: A homogeneous catalyst system for the production of methanol. A process based on sustainable feedstock, designed for modularity and scalability in a modern industrial context, operating at low temperatures and pressures.
The implications go beyond chemistry. Production capacity becomes flexible: plants can be scaled in increments to match local supply, and the process tolerates the fluctuating availability that is inherent to renewable feedstocks. But modularity does not mean small. The same technology can be scaled up to compete with conventional large-scale production. For a continent that needs to build green methanol capacity quickly, from diverse and distributed sources, this is not a marginal advantage. It is a structural one.
The Valley of Death
So why is this not the technological benchmark? Because deep-tech innovation does not follow the trajectory of a software startup. You cannot iterate your way to a marketable product with a laptop and an AI subscription – at least not yet. You need scientists, reactors, feedstock, engineering, permits, and very patient capital.
The so-called “valley of death” between proof of concept and commercial-scale production is particularly deep in the chemical sector. A novel catalyst may show exceptional performance in the lab, but translating that into a robust, scalable, industrially viable process requires years of development, without offering any guarantee of success. Studies estimate that bringing a new process from lab-scale to commercial operation requires patience, grit, and 50 to 200 million Euro in funding (19, 20). The path from laboratory to industrial scale is paved with tombstones of promising technologies that ran out of funding before they ran out of potential.
This valley is not a gap that the market closes on its own. First-of-a-kind plants are too large and too capital-intensive for venture capital firms, but too unproven for conventional project finance. Banks require long-term offtake agreements before they will lend, offtake partners require proven production volumes before they dare to commit. The result is a painfully slow waltz back and forth, delaying deployment by years. Years that Europe does not have.
It needs more than Policy
Instruments to break this cycle exist. The EU Innovation Fund, for example, is specifically designed to support first-of-a-kind clean technology projects at commercial scale (21). But instruments alone are not enough. What needs to be built – from green technology at scale, resilient supply chains, to a credible answer to climate change – requires persistent political will and individual courage. No policy framework will deliver results if permit authorities take years to approve what they claim to support. Europe cannot simultaneously declare a climate emergency and treat daring projects as a regulatory obstacle courses (22, 23). At the same time, no instrument will help if the people who run procurement departments, sign offtake agreements, or approve capital expenditure wait for someone else to move first. The instinct to wait for certainty before committing is understandable, but in a less stable world, hesitation is a risky option. The patterns that worked for Europe for decades – optimizing the known, scaling the proven, sourcing the cheapest – are not a strategy for what lies ahead. Europe’s industrial leaders do not need more data to act, but the courage to take decisions before the picture is complete.
The Strait of Hormuz might reopen eventually. The acute crisis might pass. But the structural vulnerability and the need for green chemicals will remain unless we build the alternatives now.
Thermodynamics does not negotiate. Neither should our ambition.
This topic was explored further in a session at Chemspec Europe 2026 at the Koelnmesse, Germany which took place between 6-7 of May 2026. For more information visit: https://www.chemspeceurope.com/en-gb.html
About the author
Carsten Wolfering is Head of Catalyst Supply Chain at C1 Green Chemicals AG, where he leads the scale-up of a homogeneous organometallic catalyst from laboratory to industrial scale. Previously, he spent several years at Clariant in petrochemical catalyst technology, progressing from Engineering Service to Global EPC Management, managing international catalyst projects for greenfield and revamp projects in the petrochemical field.
