In the coming decades the share of renewable energy in the energy mix will expand substantially in all parts of the world. This development is driven by the spectacular ongoing reduction in costs of solar and wind energy. As a consequence, it is expected that ‘renewable electrons’ will become available at very competitive prices in the second half of the 21st century, strongly impacting the value of methane as a ‘simple’ energy source. The market for chemicals is expected to keep growing strongly, albeit with an expected increase in CO2 taxation for fossil resources.

Currently, we are exploring several options to unlock new monetization routes for methane as an (advantaged) feedstock for chemicals and materials rather than based on its calorific value. In this paper, we’ll show a cross-section of different activities around methane chemistry. We aim to address both fundamental research as well as showing results on exploring chemical routes.