This fall when I spoke with Amy Duffuor, a co-founder and partner at the venture capital firm Azolla Ventures, she told me that her firm, which is focused on “overlooked and neglected” climate solutions, has been fascinated by the shipping industry. Because while aviation and shipping each account for about 3% of global emissions, decarbonizing flight seems to get the bulk of the attention. “Sometimes it’s hard for people to imagine what they don’t see or what they’re not interacting with on a day to day basis,” Duffuor told me.
This fall, the firm co-led a $4.5 million seed round of investment in clean fuels producer Oxylus Energy, which converts carbon dioxide into green methanol for use in shipping and other transportation fuels. The tech relies on renewable-powered electrolyzers similar to those used to make green hydrogen, but the company’s secret sauce is a special catalyst that can convert carbon dioxide into methanol at low temperature and pressure, makingthe whole process more efficient and more economical than ever before.
Duffuor told me that green methanol has a leg up on other clean fuels such as green hydrogen, which has a low energy density, or green ammonia, which is highly toxic and corrosive. While supply of all of these is still limited and costly, Duffuor said that retrofitting an engine to run on green methanol is much simpler than adapting to other alternative fuels, which is why it’s already being done on a small scale today. Indeed, shipping giant Maersk has a number of green methanol boats in its fleet, one of which completed the world’s first green methanol-powered voyage last fall.
Katie Brigham
Source: https://heatmap.news/technology/climate-tech-for-2025
