An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

A $7 mil­lion in­vest­ment is pow­er­ing a pi­lot project aimed at putting methanol-fu­elled heavy-du­ty ve­hi­cles on Trinidad and To­ba­go’s roads, with Pro­man and Du­more En­ter­pris­es now look­ing to de­ter­mine whether the lo­cal­ly pro­duced fu­el can be­come a com­mer­cial­ly vi­able al­ter­na­tive for road trans­porta­tion.

Four 100 per cent methanol-pow­ered Geely trucks were launched in Trinidad on Wednes­day, mark­ing what Pro­man de­scribes as the first de­ploy­ment of such ve­hi­cles on the road out­side Chi­na.

Du­more En­ter­pris­es has made most of the in­vest­ment in the pi­lot, while Pro­man is sup­ply­ing the methanol fu­el. Du­more man­ag­ing di­rec­tor Alex Jod­han placed the to­tal in­vest­ment in the project at ap­prox­i­mate­ly $7 mil­lion.

“For us, a show of com­mit­ment. It’s a show of the se­ri­ous­ness of how we’re ap­proach­ing al­ter­na­tive fu­els and the im­pact that we have on the en­vi­ron­ment around us,” Jod­han told Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian on Thurs­day at Pro­man’s Queen’s Park East of­fice.

Pro­man Trinidad deputy man­ag­ing di­rec­tor Giselle Thomp­son de­scribed the project as a first step to­wards es­tab­lish­ing com­mer­cial­ly vi­able methanol road trans­porta­tion in this coun­try, with the da­ta gath­ered lo­cal­ly ex­pect­ed to de­ter­mine whether the con­cept can be ex­pand­ed.

“These trucks are 100 per cent methanol-pow­ered trucks. How­ev­er, that’s called M100 as a fu­el,” Thomp­son ex­plained.

A fur­ther pos­si­bil­i­ty is the in­tro­duc­tion of M15, a methanol-gaso­line blend that can be used in ex­ist­ing in­ter­nal com­bus­tion en­gines, al­though this would re­quire changes to lo­cal fu­el stan­dards.

For Pro­man, the project ex­tends the use of methanol be­yond its tra­di­tion­al role as a chem­i­cal feed­stock and in­to trans­porta­tion and the wider en­er­gy tran­si­tion.

Alexan­der Döll, chief ex­ec­u­tive of the Glob­al Methanol Al­liance, views T&T as an im­por­tant demon­stra­tion point be­cause the coun­try al­ready has the raw ma­te­r­i­al, tech­ni­cal ex­pe­ri­ence and an es­tab­lished com­mer­cial methanol in­dus­try.

“What you have is lo­cal pro­duce; T&T is known for methanol. You are ex­perts, you have a lot of ex­pe­ri­ence, and you are pro­duc­ing for the globe,” Döll told Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian.

He de­scribed the four trucks as ev­i­dence that a new val­ue chain is be­gin­ning to take shape.

“You have the lo­cal pro­duce, then you have proven tech­nol­o­gy for ve­hi­cles, and then al­so you have a com­mer­cial set­ting.”

From ex­port com­mod­i­ty to road fu­el

Pro­man has been ex­am­in­ing methanol’s po­ten­tial as an en­er­gy car­ri­er as the com­pa­ny re­sponds to changes in glob­al en­er­gy mar­kets.

Thomp­son point­ed to geopo­lit­i­cal ten­sions, en­er­gy se­cu­ri­ty con­cerns and cli­mate-re­lat­ed pres­sures as fac­tors dri­ving the com­pa­ny’s in­ter­est in al­ter­na­tive ap­pli­ca­tions for methanol.

“Tra­di­tion­al­ly, our mar­kets have al­ways been about pro­vid­ing methanol as a build­ing block for chem­i­cals and oth­er goods,” she ex­plained. “What is the role for methanol as a path­way fu­el in this en­er­gy tran­si­tion?”

Pro­man first pur­sued methanol in ma­rine trans­porta­tion, in­clud­ing the de­vel­op­ment of methanol fu­el tankers al­ready op­er­at­ing with­in its fleet. Road trans­porta­tion is the next area be­ing test­ed through the Trinidad pi­lot.

For this coun­try, the sig­nif­i­cance lies in putting a por­tion of lo­cal­ly pro­duced methanol to work do­mes­ti­cal­ly rather than ex­port­ing it ex­clu­sive­ly to in­ter­na­tion­al mar­kets.

Du­more has pre­vi­ous­ly worked on al­ter­na­tive fu­els, in­clud­ing com­pressed nat­ur­al gas, and Jod­han sees methanol as par­tic­u­lar­ly in­ter­est­ing be­cause it can be used as a liq­uid fu­el for ve­hi­cles.

Jod­han said the project re­mains in the pi­lot phase, with the four trucks re­quired to clock 100,000 kilo­me­tres over an es­ti­mat­ed 12 to 18 months. Da­ta col­lect­ed dur­ing the test­ing pe­ri­od will help de­ter­mine the com­mer­cial vi­a­bil­i­ty of the fu­el and es­tab­lish pric­ing for methanol as a road trans­porta­tion fu­el.

He said an­oth­er at­trac­tion is methanol’s po­ten­tial role as a hy­dro­gen car­ri­er.

“I’ve al­ways been very in­ter­est­ed or ex­cit­ed about what these al­ter­na­tive fu­els can bring,” Jod­han said. “Cer­tain­ly the fact that methanol be­ing able to ex­ist as a fu­el for ve­hi­cles in its liq­uid form was very ex­cit­ing for me.”

He added that methanol is “an ex­cel­lent car­ri­er of hy­dro­gen” and de­scribed it as a strong foun­da­tion for “a fu­el of the fu­ture”.

Pro­man has the ca­pac­i­ty to sup­ply ad­di­tion­al lo­cal de­mand if the pi­lot ex­pands.

The com­pa­ny has been T&Ts largest methanol pro­duc­er for decades, and Thomp­son con­firmed that it is po­si­tioned to sup­ply lo­cal fleet op­er­a­tors.

“Pro­man has been the coun­try’s largest pro­duc­er of methanol for decades. And yes, we are very se­cure in the fact that we can sup­ply fu­el to lo­cal providers on the ground and lo­cal fleet man­agers.”

Whether more trucks are added, how­ev­er, will ul­ti­mate­ly de­pend on Du­more’s as­sess­ment of the pi­lot and the da­ta gen­er­at­ed from op­er­at­ing the ve­hi­cles.

Jod­han is open to ex­pan­sion.

“Most def­i­nite­ly,” he re­spond­ed when asked whether Du­more would con­sid­er in­creas­ing its methanol-pow­ered fleet.

He views the pi­lot as part of a broad­er ef­fort to de­vel­op al­ter­na­tive trans­porta­tion tech­nolo­gies and demon­strate their com­mer­cial po­ten­tial.

“What we’re do­ing here goes far be­yond what we do just for Du­more as a com­pa­ny and for Pro­man as a com­pa­ny,” he said.

“I think we both look at it as some­thing that we can do to al­so help sup­port the coun­try.”

Du­more cur­rent­ly em­ploys close to 200 peo­ple and op­er­ates from lo­ca­tions in­clud­ing San Fer­nan­do, South Oropouche and Point Lisas. Its ac­tiv­i­ties span oil­field and in­dus­tri­al sup­plies, man­u­fac­tur­ing, truck­ing, lo­gis­tics, equip­ment rental, ve­hi­cle fleets, fu­el and me­chan­i­cal ser­vices.

The com­pa­ny al­ready works with com­pressed nat­ur­al gas, gaso­line, diesel and elec­tric ve­hi­cles, with methanol now be­ing added to its al­ter­na­tive-fu­el port­fo­lio.

Build­ing a lo­cal ev­i­dence base

One of the cen­tral ob­jec­tives of the pi­lot is to pro­duce T&T-spe­cif­ic da­ta on the per­for­mance and eco­nom­ics of methanol-fu­elled heavy ve­hi­cles.

Thomp­son said that ev­i­dence will be im­por­tant for de­ter­min­ing whether the tech­nol­o­gy can move be­yond Du­more’s fleet and in­to oth­er com­mer­cial and pub­lic-sec­tor ap­pli­ca­tions.

“The pur­pose of this study is ac­tu­al­ly to prove the con­cept and then be able to share that da­ta,” she ex­plained.

“That is lo­cal da­ta that we’ll be gath­er­ing right here in Trinidad and To­ba­go, not re­ly­ing on in­ter­na­tion­al bench­marks and da­ta.”

Po­ten­tial users in­clude com­pa­nies op­er­at­ing heavy trucks and equip­ment, road con­trac­tors and pub­lic-sec­tor fleets.

Thomp­son iden­ti­fied pub­lic trans­porta­tion as one area that could even­tu­al­ly be ex­am­ined.

“One of the first op­por­tu­ni­ties, I think, to scale this would be to ex­am­ine the use of methanol in our bus­es and our pub­lic trans­porta­tion sys­tem.”

She al­so point­ed to the pos­si­bil­i­ty of M15 be­ing in­cor­po­rat­ed in­to the ex­ist­ing ve­hi­cle fleets, sub­ject to changes in fu­el stan­dards.

Gov­ern­ment sup­port has been im­por­tant in get­ting the four-truck pi­lot ap­proved. Thomp­son re­ferred to sup­port from the Trans­port Com­mis­sion in al­low­ing the project to pro­ceed.

The next stage will be to op­er­ate the ve­hi­cles, col­lect per­for­mance in­for­ma­tion and es­tab­lish whether the eco­nom­ics sup­port wider de­ploy­ment.

For Jod­han, that com­mer­cial ques­tion is one of the prin­ci­pal chal­lenges fac­ing any first mover in al­ter­na­tive fu­els.

“As any first mover, the chal­lenge is: how do you make it vi­able? How do you make it prof­itable?” he asked.

He al­so iden­ti­fied the risk in­volved in adopt­ing new tech­nol­o­gy be­fore its com­mer­cial mod­el has been ful­ly es­tab­lished.

“An­oth­er chal­lenge I would say is you have to be able to take the risk, and step­ping in­to risk is not an easy thing.”

Döll places Trinidad’s ex­per­i­ment with­in a much larg­er glob­al shift in the use of methanol.

Chi­na has al­ready de­ployed around 30,000 methanol-pow­ered ve­hi­cles, al­though the tech­nol­o­gy is not con­fined to heavy trucks. Pas­sen­ger cars and SU­Vs are al­so op­er­at­ing on methanol.

Oth­er coun­tries are ex­am­in­ing ap­pli­ca­tions in bus­es, ship­ping, avi­a­tion and pow­er gen­er­a­tion.

Döll point­ed to Hong Kong, where dis­cus­sions are tak­ing place around the use of methanol-pow­ered bus­es as elec­tric­i­ty de­mand puts pres­sure on the ex­ist­ing grid. South Ko­rea and Malaysia are al­so ex­am­in­ing methanol ap­pli­ca­tions.

For the Glob­al Methanol Al­liance, Trinidad’s im­por­tance is there­fore not lim­it­ed to the size of its do­mes­tic ve­hi­cle mar­ket.

“What you are do­ing in T&T, doesn’t stay in here. It lit­er­al­ly will go every­where across the globe,” Döll said.

The or­gan­i­sa­tion has a glob­al reach, with of­fices in Chi­na, Sin­ga­pore, In­dia, Eu­rope and the Unit­ed States. Döll said de­vel­op­ments in one mar­ket can in­form de­ci­sions in an­oth­er.

“When we are in Hong Kong, I would love to talk about Trinidad and To­ba­go, what they are do­ing. But when I’m in T&T, I would love to talk about Chi­na, be­cause then you can learn what is hap­pen­ing in Chi­na.”

He does not see methanol as a sin­gle-sec­tor so­lu­tion.

The mol­e­cule is al­ready be­ing used in ma­rine fu­el ap­pli­ca­tions, while methanol-to-jet is be­ing ex­plored as a path­way for avi­a­tion. Döll al­so point­ed to the grow­ing avail­abil­i­ty of methanol bunker­ing in­fra­struc­ture for ship­ping.
He iden­ti­fied that ma­jor mar­itime com­pa­nies are among the Glob­al Methanol Al­liance’s mem­bers, in­clud­ing CMA CGM and Dis­ney Cruis­es.

Döll said ship­ping op­er­a­tors are look­ing not on­ly at emis­sions but at the com­mer­cial fun­da­men­tals of fu­el sup­ply, in­clud­ing price, avail­abil­i­ty, stor­age, trans­porta­tion and com­pli­ance with emerg­ing reg­u­la­tions.

“Methanol is very easy to store, very easy to trans­port, very easy to han­dle,” he said.

He al­so stressed that the tran­si­tion away from fos­sil fu­els will not hap­pen in­stan­ta­neous­ly.

“We are in an en­er­gy tran­si­tion. It’s not a flip of the switch. It takes time to get in­to more re­new­able op­tions.”