Climate change: Shanghai’s main gas supplier is building facilities to turn kitchen waste into green methanol to fuel ships

Name: China beats SpaceX with world’s first methane-powered rocket launch
Uploaded: 2024-05-15T23:30:25.000Z
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Description: China beats SpaceX with world’s first methane-powered rocket launch

Facilities capable of producing up to 100,000 tonnes of green methanol from leftover food will be ready by end-2025, says Shenergy vice-president

Traditional disposal methods like burying or incineration are less effective when food waste is included and cause pollution

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A Shenenergy processing facility that can turn kitchen waste into natural gas in the Jinshan district of Shanghai. Photo: SCMP Pictures

Daniel Renin Shanghai

Published: 7:30am, 16 May 2024

Shenergy Group, the major natural gas supplier in Shanghai, is building facilities to turn mountains of kitchen food waste into green methanol, an alternative fuel for the carbon-intensive shipping industry as mainland China’s economic powerhouse strives to reduce pollution and enhance industrial efficiency.

Facilities that are capable of producing 70,000 to 100,000 tonnes of green methanol from leftover food will be ready by the end of 2025, Shi Pingyang, vice-president of Shenergy told reporters during a media briefing on Wednesday.

“We want to collect more kitchen waste to promote the development of the technique,” he said. “In a densely populated city like Shanghai, a huge amount of kitchen waste can be better utilised to pursue a greener local economy.”

Green methanol is viewed as a low-carbon liquid fuel that can be widely used in maritime transport. Unlike conventional methanol, it is produced from sustainable biomass, or from carbon dioxide and hydrogen produced from renewable electricity.

Separated kitchen leftovers, also known as wet waste in mainland China, can be turned into resources such as compost or oil and methane gas for industrial use.

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Shi told the Post that Shenergy, which supplies more than 10 billion cubic metres of natural gas, or 95 per cent of the city’s total, has a gargantuan natural gas infrastructure network to support the development of the new technique.