The reactor team at
@terraformindies has demonstrated successful production of high purity methanol at scale at our Muroc desert test site.
Let's review our progress in 2026. In January, we closed on our Muroc test site. By March, construction was underway. By May, we had 1.8 MW of solar installed. In July, we produced CO2 on site (
nitter.net/CJHandmer/status/20801…), and in August, hydrogen (
nitter.net/CJHandmer/status/20847…).
Terraform Industries has built an incredible team to revolutionize not just one or two key technical pieces, but the entire stack required to convert sunlight and air into fuel. Like plants, only 100 times higher productivity per acre and requiring no irrigation, fertilizer, or pesticide.
Two years ago, Terraform produced pipeline-grade natural gas for the first time. Since then, we've scaled up our methane reactor, increasing production by 250x and reducing contaminants by 10x, which allows us to increasing revenue per unit of product by 100x because it's now at chemically pure grade.
But it was always clear to me that natural gas was only one piece of the puzzle. It is possible to convert natural gas into other hydrocarbon products like gasoline or jet fuel, but given our precursors are CO2 and hydrogen, we can do one better by directly synthesizing methanol as well.
Methanol is far easier to convert into longer chain hydrocarbon products, either via the MeOH->DME->ethylene pathway, MTG, or via variations on Fischer-Tropsch.
Methanol also has significantly higher revenue per molecule than pipeline natural gas, which forms an essential part of our cost-reduction-through-profitable-scale-up strategy, explained in more detail in our post:
terraformindustries.wordpres…
TL;DR: If our learning rate is above 11%, our margins will strictly increase as we scale up into a market worth about $10t/year. Not including induced demand.
Amir joined the team earlier this year and speed ran the methanol reactor development program, successfully demonstrating recirculation and heat recycling before integrating these new technologies in a production scale reactor, built from the ground up at Terraform's facility in Burbank.
As soon as the hydrogen team was done, we shipped our latest reactor up to the desert, plugged it in, and began activating the catalyst. An extended test campaign through the heat of summer followed, punctuated by bunnies nibbling on hoses!
The hard work paid off, with Terraform's production of significant batches of high purity methanol, now packaged and ready to ship. A huge congratulation to the entire team, including Amir, Enric, Dominic, Hugo, and
@lucie_nurdin.
With the completion of this test, Terraform has now demonstrated TRL 9 operation of all of its subcomponents, each developed from scratch, in house, to deliver the highest possible value to the end customer.
Terraform will never rest until we have broken the geological and geographical monopoly on oil, unlocking unconditional energy abundance for all of humanity. Join us!