Techno-economic Analysis of E-Methanol Infrastructure Choices for Finland

Large-scale e-methanol production requires three things: renewable electricity, hydrogen, and CO₂.
But what if they are not in the same place?

This paper asks a simple but strategic question:
Should we move electricity, hydrogen, or CO₂?

Using Finland as a case study, three infrastructure configurations are compared:

• Transporting CO₂ to renewable electricity sites
• Transporting hydrogen to CO₂ sources
• Transporting electricity to CO₂ sources

The analysis shows that transporting CO₂ is consistently the lowest-cost option, while electricity transmission is the most expensive. The difference is not dramatic (3–15%), but it is systematic — and robust under Monte Carlo analysis.

Beyond cost, the study also discusses flexibility, stranded-asset risk, safety, and infrastructure lock-in. The result is not just a number. It is a decision framework for locating Power-to-X facilities when resources are geographically dispersed.

SimDec is used to decompose uncertainty and reveal which assumptions actually drive outcomes — primarily methanol synthesis capex and WACC — rather than pipeline or capture details.