Frank Obrist, founder and CEO of the German-Austrian Obrist Group, says renewable energy derived from air and sunlight that is transportable and storable with the same ease as fossil fuels no longer is a utopian vision but a fully developed technical concept ready for large-scale industrial implementation.
“Green methanol is a renewable energy source that can replace all fossil fuels worldwide,” Obrist claims. “As hard to imagine today as the iPhone was before its launch in 2007, green methanol will be as commonplace in 15 years as smartphones are today."
Obrist anticipates this pivotal shift toward “liquid solar energy” to take off in 2025.
“The world faces a dilemma: the escalating threat of global warming from continued fossil fuel use and the uncertainties of relying solely on wind and solar power for energy,” he said in a news release. “The solution lies in solar energy—not as electricity, which is challenging to store and transport, but in the form of green methanol.”
CO2-negative equals climate-positive
In simple terms, the process involves extracting water from the air and using solar energy to convert it into hydrogen, which is then transformed into methanol, the Obrist Group explained. Methanol, a liquid at room temperature, can be stored for long periods in standard containers and easily transported via conventional methods such as pipelines, tankers, trains, or trucks. The key innovation: More CO2 is captured from the atmosphere during methanol production than is released during its combustion.
This Direct Air Capture (DAC) technology, developed and patented by Obrist, functions like a “CO2 vacuum,” removing carbon dioxide that has accumulated in the atmosphere over decades of industrial activity. Obrist refers to this product as aMethanol (Atmospheric Methanol) and describes the process as “sub-zero.” Unlike achieving net-zero emissions, this method goes further by actively reducing atmospheric CO2 levels, making the process CO2-negative and therefore climate-positive.
“In order to leave an intact climate for future generations, we need to capture the carbon dioxide emitted by the extensive use of fossil fuels, i.e. remove it from the atmosphere,” explained Obrist, who holds over 252 registered and 128 granted patents worldwide that are designed to do exactly that.
The United Nations supports the concept, the group reported.
“Many people can only envision possibilities once they’ve become reality,” Obrist continued, offering examples: “Twenty years ago, the smartphone was unimaginable until Steve Jobs unveiled the iPhone in 2007. Similarly, Elon Musk’s idea of a battery-powered electric car was met with skepticism around 15 years ago—yet today, the European car industry is no longer laughing. In the same way, the concept of liquid solar energy may seem utopian to many, even though its implementation is already within reach.”
Green methanol: A cost-effective alternative to fossil fuels
Obrist refutes the counterargument that green methanol production is uneconomical. "Solar energy is almost free in the earth's sun belt,” he contended. “If we set up methanol factories there, the cost of this renewable energy source, at just under 6 cents per kilowatt hour, will be significantly lower than all fossil fuels, even when transport costs are included.”
The Obrist Group is planning to build “gigaplants,” or giant solar parks that will not supply electricity, but green methanol. Almost 4 million tons of methanol are to be produced per year on an area of around 280 square kilometers, the company said. At today’s energy prices, this corresponds to a sales volume of around $4.3 billion per year. The annual operating costs are estimated at around $340 million, leaving a gross profit of almost $4 billion a year. The construction costs for a gigaplant, calculated at $18.6 billion, would therefore be recouped in less than five years, which corresponds to an annual return on capital cost of over 21%.
“The high profitability is key to attracting investors,” Obrist concluded. “Every investor should recognize that entering the gigaplant business today is comparable to investing in Apple 20 years ago or Tesla 15 years ago in terms of financial potential.”