Riga’s green methanol MoU: Korean bio-methanol know-how meets Latvia’s renewable ambitions
The Freeport of Riga, Seoul-based ECOMETHANOL and Latvia’s AE Risinājumi have signed a three-year memorandum to develop a green methanol plant and a bunkering point in the Port of Riga. We look at which green methanol route is actually on the table, what the Korean partner brings from its Taebaek plant, and why a Korea–Latvia value chain matters for the Baltic PtX ecosystem.
NEWS
PtXBaltic
10/20/20266 min read
Everyone in the Baltics talks about green methanol. Nobody here makes it. Methanol-fuelled container ships already call at Riga, and the fuel in their tanks came from somewhere else. That changed a little today. At Riga City Council, with the Korean ambassador in the room, the Freeport of Riga Authority, Seoul-based ECOMETHANOL Co., Ltd. and Latvian company SIA “AE Risinājumi” signed a memorandum to develop green methanol production, export and ship bunkering in the port. A memorandum, mind you. No capacity figure, no budget, no construction date. Still, the way the partnership is put together says a lot about where this could go, and about which kind of “green” methanol we’re actually talking about.
What was actually signed in Riga
The three parties have given themselves three years to prepare the project. The announcement lists what that covers: picking a site in the port, land-lease terms, infrastructure planning (utility connections, transport links, access to terminals), environmental requirements, whatever support mechanisms are available, and methanol bunkering infrastructure. Land-lease and implementation terms come later, in separate agreements. So this is the front end of a project. The part where you find out whether the numbers close.
The idea is to put three things in one place: a green methanol plant, an export route for what it makes, and a bunkering point for ships. Freeport of Riga CEO Ansis Zeltiņš said as much at the signing. The partners also talk about serving ships running between Europe and Asia on the Northern Sea Route, Riga at one end, Korea at the other. We’d read that as the partners’ ambition rather than a settled trade lane. The Baltic short-sea market is closer and a lot more concrete. LIAA and the Latvian embassy in Korea made the introduction, and LIAA director Ieva Jāgere pointed at the regulation behind it all: big ships calling at EU ports have to keep cutting the carbon intensity of the energy they burn, and that pulls demand toward cleaner fuels.
Two roads to green methanol: biomass or electrons
This is where it gets interesting. “Green methanol” hides two very different ways of making the stuff. One is bio-methanol. You gasify biomass, usually forestry or farm residues, get a synthesis gas, turn it into methanol. The other is e-methanol. You make hydrogen with an electrolyser running on renewable power and bolt it onto captured CO₂. Same molecule in the ship’s tank. Completely different inputs, cost drivers, permits and carbon accounting.
ECOMETHANOL sits firmly in the first camp. The plant it’s developing in Taebaek, South Korea, turns forestry residues into methanol through dual fluidised bed gasification. Its representative, John (Kukhyun) Kyung, said the Riga cooperation will look at building a biomethanol plant in Latvia. His words, not ours. As the Korean side describes it today, this is a bio-methanol project.
The Latvian side tells it a bit differently. Gatis Galviņš of AE Risinājumi talked about taking Latvia from making cheap green electricity to turning it into high-value products for export, with methanol as the bridge between renewable power and shipping. That’s Power-to-X talk. The two versions don’t contradict each other, but they aren’t the same thing either. Which one wins in the engineering phase decides what gets built: a wood-fed gasifier, an electrolyser feeding a synthesis unit, or a hybrid where renewable hydrogen is added to the biomass syngas to squeeze more methanol out of the same wood. The hybrid is well known technically and would use both of Latvia’s advantages at once. Nothing published today settles it. We’d call it the single most important open question in the whole announcement.
What ECOMETHANOL brings from Taebaek
ECOMETHANOL is a special-purpose company set up by Plagen, a Korean clean-energy engineering firm, to build what’s billed as Korea’s first domestic green methanol plant. Taebaek, in Gangwon State, is old coal-mining country. The plant is sized at 15,000 tonnes a year. Trade press reports say the site is secured, the integrated environmental permit is in, basic design is done, construction starts December 2026 and first product is targeted for January 2029. Reported investment: around KRW 120 billion. The company itself told trade media that Korea makes no green methanol at all right now, even though Ulsan bunkered the stuff back in 2023.
So the Korean partner isn’t showing up with a running reference plant. It’s showing up with a permitted, designed, not-yet-built project and a commercial model that’s been tested on paper. That’s more than most green methanol announcements can say. It’s also a long way from a proven asset. If Taebaek only produces in 2029, a Latvian twin is realistically a 2030-and-later story.
The Latvian half of the equation: wood, wind and a port
Why would a biomass-gasification developer look at Latvia? Feedstock, obviously. Roughly half the country is forest, and the wood-processing sector is big, export-oriented and throws off residues at industrial scale. A plant that eats forestry residues needs exactly what Latvia has a lot of, at a port where it can be gathered up and where the product can leave by sea.
Then electricity. Latvian wholesale power has got cheaper as wind and solar came online, and the grid has been synchronised with Continental Europe since early 2025. That’s what AE Risinājumi is pointing at. If the project ever adds an electrolyser, Riga would be selling the energy locked inside a molecule instead of raw megawatt-hours. That is the whole point of Power-to-X in a country that exports electricity cheaply and imports fuel dearly.
And the port. Riga has handled liquid and chemical cargoes for decades. It has deep-water terminals. Since September 2024 it’s been a scheduled stop on X-Press Feeders’ Green Baltic X-PRESS loop, the first container service in the region running on green methanol, so there are already methanol-capable ships tied up at the quay. Klaipėda, meanwhile, has a concept design for an 800-tonne methanol bunker vessel and a deal with Proman for storage and bunkering. If Riga makes its own fuel, that’s a real edge in that regional contest.
Why a Korean company picked Latvia, and what the offtake model looks like
Taebaek is worth a close look because of how it was put together. In August 2026 ECOMETHANOL signed a five-party supply memorandum with Taebaek City, Hyundai Corporation, Wallenius Wilhelmsen Ocean and EUKOR Car Carriers. Hyundai buys the methanol and sells it on to the two car carriers for their methanol-fuelled ships. Taebaek City co-invests and smooths the policy side. Production, trading and end use were tied together before anyone broke ground. Korean-linked carriers have been bunkering imported green methanol until now; one EUKOR ship reportedly took on about 2,800 tonnes in Shanghai in July 2026.
Hold the Riga memorandum up against that. The port authority plays the Taebaek City role: land, infrastructure, permits, political cover. AE Risinājumi is the local developer who knows Latvian renewables and regulation. What’s missing, for now, is the trader and the buyer. ECOMETHANOL’s talk of supplying green ship fuel at both ends of the Europe–Asia route hints at who that might be: the same car-carrier operators calling at Korean yards and European ports. That’s the thing to watch. A Riga plant with a named shipping offtaker is a very different project from a Riga plant with a site and a wish.
Take away the diplomatic phrasing and the logic is plain enough. A Korean firm with a permitted design and a working commercial template wants a second site inside the EU, where FuelEU Maritime and the ETS make low-carbon fuel worth paying extra for. Latvia has biomass, cheap power, a port and a government agency happy to make introductions.
What the memorandum leaves open
Let’s list the gaps. No capacity figure for Riga. No investment estimate. No feedstock supply deal, no electricity sourcing plan, no offtake contract, no named EU funding window, though the partners say they’ll assess support mechanisms. The production route, biomass, electrolysis or hybrid, isn’t fixed. And demand has gone soft. DNV counted only a handful of methanol-fuelled newbuild orders in the first half of 2026, down from dozens a year earlier, with owners sitting on their hands until the IMO rules are clear. Methanol is still one of the leading alternative fuels in the orderbook. The hockey stick has flattened, though.
Three years is also a long runway. Long enough for the market to turn twice. The sober reading is that Riga has bought itself an option on green methanol production, with a credible technology partner, for very little money. Whether the option gets exercised depends on work nobody has started yet.
What this signals for Baltic hydrogen ecosystem stakeholders
The bio-methanol route is now live in the Baltics as a serious commercial proposal, not a slide in a deck. For anyone building electrolysis capacity in Latvia that cuts both ways: it’s competition, and it’s a ready-made hydrogen buyer a few hundred metres from the quay, since a gasifier can take renewable hydrogen to lift its output. The Korean model, with the fuel buyer in the room before the first shovel, is the one Baltic developers should copy. It’s what makes a 15,000-tonne plant financeable. And Riga and Klaipėda are now openly competing to be the Baltic’s green methanol bunkering port. Making the fuel locally is the strongest card either of them can play. PtXBaltic will keep tracking this one as the site, the production route and the offtake partners come into view. For now it’s the most concrete green methanol production proposal Latvia has seen, and the right questions to put to it are about feedstock, electrons, and who signs the fuel contract.
Source: Rīgas osta un Dienvidkorejas ECOMETHANOL paraksta memorandu par zaļā metanola ražošanas attīstību