Shipping remains one of the world’s biggest climate polluters, with most vessels still running on diesel or heavy fuel oil. The sector is responsible for around one billion tons of CO₂ emissions each year, roughly three percent of global carbon dioxide emissions.
Christian Vollmann, a veteran of Berlin’s start-up scene known for ventures such as eDarling, MyVideo, and nebenan.de, is now turning his attention to climate technology. Together with quantum chemist Marek Checinski, he founded the start-up C1, which has developed an innovative catalytic process for producing green methanol from biomass.
Methanol is already widely used in industry and is increasingly seen as a promising alternative fuel for shipping. Until now, however, it has mostly been produced from natural gas and coal, making it what is often called gray methanol. C1’s process is designed to change that by enabling production not only from biomass, but also from captured CO₂ and green hydrogen.
In an interview, Vollmann explained that he wanted to contribute to solving climate change and help scale strong scientific research into real industrial innovation. That ambition is central to C1’s mission as it works to bring green chemistry into commercial use.
The company already operates a functioning reactor that continuously produces methanol. Even so, Vollmann estimates that it will still take two to three years before the product is ready for the market. If the technology proves scalable, it could play an important role in reducing emissions in both shipping and the chemical industry.