A startup that was spun out of MIT wants to go beyond low carbon fuel and accelerate carbon negative fuel production. And they’ve partnered up with a publicly traded renewable natural gas company to do it.

‍What’s happening:‍

• Montauk Renewables (NASDAQ: MNTK) has launched a new collaboration with MIT spinout Emvolon that is aiming to recover and convert biogas into carbon negative green methanol
  

The big idea:‍

• Emvolon has developed a technology process that is capable of converting low grade stranded gas such as landfill gas, biogas and waste biomass into carbon negative chemicals and fuel
  
• Through converting methane emitting gas into synthetic gas, Emvolon is able to produce high quality green methanol and green ammonia
  

Why it matters:‍

• Green methanol is an exceptionally promising fuel for the energy transition, with the potential to be used for replacing fossil fuels in vehicles, sustainable aviation fuel and large scale energy storage systems
  
• Producing green ammonia at commercial scale is also becoming more important as a way to lower the emissions of fertilizer for agriculture, which recently notably led to one of India’s largest energy companies Torrent Power making a multi billion dollar investment into new production facilities for green ammonia
  

By the numbers:‍

• The pilot project between Montauk Renewables and Emvolon is designed to produce approximately 15,000 gallons of green methanol, which could increase to 2.4M galloons of green methanol annually if the technology proves to be scaleable
  

Going deeper:‍

• Montauk Renewables will host the pilot project with Emvolon at their renewable natural gas production site located in Humble, Texas
  
• The public markets have been getting excited about low carbon fuel sources lately, following multiple companies announcing new deals and acquisitions that have the potential to dramatically scale up the production capabilities of everything from renewable natural gas to synthetic diesel fuel

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