Inpex and Osaka Gas launch Japan’s \"world’s largest\" green hydrogen-based methane production plant

Thread Content

Inpex and Osaka Gas launch Japan’s \"world’s largest\" green hydrogen-based synthetic methane plant 2026-02-26 15:18:24 Inpex and Osaka Gas announced that their pilot \"electromethane\" facility has begun operations, producing synthetic methane using green hydrogen and captured carbon dioxide. The two companies describe the project as \"the world’s largest methanation facility,\" capable of converting 400 standard cubic meters of carbon dioxide into an equal volume of methane per hour. This is equivalent to producing 2,500 tons of methane per year, exceeding that of the world’s largest synthetic methane facility to date – Hy2gen’s Atlantis e-methane plant in Germany, which has an annual production capacity of 1,800 tons. The Inpex-Osaka Gas project is located near Inpex’s Nagano mining site office, adjacent to the Echigo-Hara natural gas processing plant that supplies it with carbon dioxide. The electronic methane produced in Nagaoka will be transported back to the Echigo-Hara treatment plant and then fed into Inpex’s existing natural gas pipeline. The Echigahara plant processes 4.2 million cubic meters of natural gas per day; therefore, the amount of electronic methane produced by this demonstration project will represent only a negligible amount for consumers. However, although Inpex and Osaka Gas stated that the project uses green hydrogen, it was not clear how the two companies obtain the hydrogen. In contrast, Hy2Gen uses a 6.3-megawatt on-site electrolyzer to produce green hydrogen for methane synthesis, and this hydrogen has been certified as a \"renewable fuel of non-biological origin\". Electronic methane can be integrated into existing natural gas distribution systems immediately, but critics argue that the energy losses during electrolysis and methanation processes will result in significantly higher costs for this gas, while also keeping society dependent on fossil natural gas during that time.