There’s been more evidence this week that methanol is making waves in the ‘clean shipping’ market.

For example, DNV’s latest figures “indicate that a total of 25 new orders were placed for alternative-fuelled vessels in March 2025” with methanol “the biggest activity driver, accounting for 12 of these new orders”.

Interestingly, these orders weren’t all for the same types of vessel, instead being “spread across diverse segments”. Specifically, “cruise vessels and car carriers accounted for three each”, along with “one offshore vessel, one bulk carrier, and the remainder crude oil/chemical tankers”.

For comparison, ammonia-fuelled ships managed two orders, “both oil/chemical tankers”.

Methanol was also in the news in the important shipping hub of Singapore, where bunker supplier Golden Island “said that it plans to start bunkering trials of low-carbon methanol with its newbuild Singapore-flagged bunker tanker in July”.

That tanker is the ‘Golden Antares’, which will be delivered “by the end of April” and “will transport methanol from Towngas (Hong Kong and China Gas Company Limited)… to Singapore for the bunkering trials”. These trials hope to “lay the foundation for future methanol bunkering at scale and spur Singapore's ambitions as a multi-fuel bunkering hub”.

Golden Island reckons the green methanol it will use “offers Carbon Intensity (CI) savings of more than 75% when compared against the CI of Very Low Sulphur Fuel Oil”. The Golden Antares will be able to carry 6,500 metric tons of the stuff.

As regards Singapore more widely, its Maritime and Port Authority has recently (in March) “opened applications for licenses to supply methanol as a marine fuel” in the state and co-authored “a new Technical Reference (TR) 129 on methanol bunkering to provide a comprehensive framework for [its] safe and efficient use”.

Germany-based energy group Mabanaft also thinks clean methanol is worth a shout and has “signed a Heads of Agreement (HoA) for the planned offtake of e-methanol” with e-fuels innovator HIF Global.

The initial scale involved “would be of up to 100 thousand tons” each year, with the focus being “to accelerate e-Methanol adoption in the shipping industry”. In parallel, Mabanaft is “now in the process of making methanol storage available at [its] Hamburg tank terminal and possibly further global locations”.

Connoisseurs of agreement terminology will be aware that this ‘HoA’ isn’t an actual final commitment on either side, but simply “outlines the starting point for negotiations to define the terms of a potential offtake contract”. And if you love your three-letter acronyms, then you’ll be excited to note that it is the follow-up to a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signed in 2021.

Now at sea, but not using methanol, is “Japan’s first hydrogen dual-fuel tug with a combustion engine”.

The tug is part of the Nippon Foundation’s ‘Zero Emissions Ships Project’ and was launched by Tsuneishi Shipbuilding. To provide fuel for its “high-power output hydrogen dual-fuel internal combustion engine”, the vessel “also has a high-pressure hydrogen gas storage system”, able “to store approximately 250kg” of hydrogen.