Comparing the Energy Costs of Hydrogen, Ammonia, and Green Methanol

Three fuels, one common input: green hydrogen, either burned directly or converted into ammonia or methanol first. The conversion step changes the cost picture more than most owners expect — and which fuel actually wins depends on whether you’re comparing raw energy cost, total delivered cost including handling, or long-run adoption economics. This case study works through all three lenses using figures already established elsewhere on this site, rather than treating any single number as the final word.

Raw Fuel Cost Per kWh

Using this site’s own Feasibility Tool price assumptions and each fuel’s lower heating value (H2: 120.0 MJ/kg, ammonia: 18.6 MJ/kg, methanol: 19.9 MJ/kg):

Year	Green H2 (€/kWh)	Green Ammonia (€/kWh)	Green Methanol (€/kWh)
2026	0.17	0.19	0.22
2030	0.22	0.15	0.16
2035	0.19	0.11	0.12
2040	0.17	0.11*	0.12*
2050	0.13	0.11*	0.12*

* The Feasibility Tool’s ammonia and methanol price curves are currently only modeled through 2035; 2040/2050 figures fall back to the 2035 value rather than an independently projected number. Hydrogen’s 2030–2050 curve was recently revised using the Fraunhofer RE-Chain import-cost study; ammonia and methanol haven’t yet been through an equivalent bottom-up revision. Treat the crossover shown here — hydrogen going from cheapest per kWh in 2026 to the most expensive from 2030 onward — as provisional until ammonia and methanol get the same treatment, not as a settled conclusion.

Why the Crossover Happened

Hydrogen looks cheapest per unit of energy in 2026 because that figure was still the tool’s original, largely unrevised assumption. Once we applied real engineering cost data — liquefaction, cryogenic storage and boil-off, maritime shipping — hydrogen’s delivered cost as a bunker fuel roughly doubled for 2030 (to ~€7.40/kg). Ammonia and methanol’s prices in the tool have not been re-derived from an equivalent supply-chain cost model, so this comparison currently understates what their delivered costs would look like under the same scrutiny. This is a real gap in our own tooling, flagged honestly rather than resolved by guessing at numbers we haven’t verified.

The Independent Check: GCMD/BCG’s Fleet Model

A separate, independently-built cost model gives a useful sanity check on the ammonia-vs-methanol question specifically. GCMD and BCG’s fleet-economics report finds that production costs favor e-ammonia over e-methanol, but higher logistics costs — crew training, exclusion zones, and specialized bunkering driven by ammonia’s toxicity — offset that advantage, leaving the two fuels at near cost parity through 2050. That’s a materially different picture from the raw-fuel table above, which shows ammonia meaningfully cheaper than methanol per kWh at every year. The gap is logistics: a lower fuel price on paper doesn’t survive contact with the safety infrastructure ammonia specifically requires.

The same report identifies the single biggest swing factor for both derivative fuels: the Levelised Cost of Hydrogen (LCOH) that feeds their production. At $2/kg LCOH, methanol and ammonia combined could reach ~36% of global fleet energy by 2050; at $3/kg, only ~4%. Whichever of the two you’d choose, the choice barely matters if LCOH doesn’t fall far enough — and per our own RE-Chain-based cross-check, real 2030 LCOH sits above even BCG’s pessimistic $3/kg case.

What the Raw Numbers Don’t Capture

Energy cost per kWh is the easiest number to compute and the least complete one. Three factors matter as much or more, in practice:

• Storage CAPEX. Hydrogen requires either high-pressure Type III/IV composite tanks (CH2) or vacuum-insulated cryogenic tanks with boil-off management (LH2) — see our technology reference for the full comparison. Ammonia and methanol are both liquid at or near ambient conditions, which is why they can use conventional liquid-bulk tank and bunkering infrastructure with far less new capital investment.
• Toxicity and safety systems. Ammonia is toxic to humans at low concentrations, which is exactly the logistics cost BCG’s model identifies — exclusion zones, specialized crew certification, and leak-detection systems that hydrogen and methanol don’t require to the same degree.
• Energy density and tank volume. Methanol and ammonia both have lower volumetric energy density than diesel, meaning more tank volume for the same range even though they avoid hydrogen’s cryogenic or high-pressure penalty specifically.

None of this is captured in a €/kWh fuel-price table, which is exactly why the “cheapest fuel” answer changes depending on which of these lenses you apply.

Why This Matters

There is no single correct answer to “which green fuel is cheapest” — it depends on your time horizon (today’s spot price vs. 2050 projection), whether you’re pricing raw fuel or total delivered cost including logistics, and how much weight you put on infrastructure compatibility versus energy cost alone. What’s consistent across every model reviewed here is that the price of green hydrogen itself is the pivot point for all three fuels — hydrogen is either the fuel itself or the production input for the other two, so nothing in this comparison escapes the same underlying cost driver.

Challenges and Open Questions

• Ammonia and methanol pricing in our own Feasibility Tool needs the same RE-Chain-style revision hydrogen just received — until then, this comparison’s 2030+ figures for those two fuels should be treated as a lower bound, not a forecast.
• BCG’s near-cost-parity finding and our raw €/kWh table disagree on ammonia vs. methanol specifically because logistics costs aren’t in the raw table — a reminder that fuel-price comparisons without a systems view can point the wrong direction.
• Biogenic CO2 cost for methanol production is flagged by BCG as a major independent uncertainty we don’t yet have site-specific cost data to check.
• None of these figures include the vessel-side CAPEX difference (cryogenic tanks vs. ambient liquid tanks) as a levelised cost — a genuinely fair comparison would fold retrofit/newbuild CAPEX into a true total cost of ownership, which is a bigger modeling exercise than this page attempts.

Sources & Further Reading

• Feasibility Tool — the price assumptions used in the raw cost table above
• A Fraunhofer Import-Cost Study, Applied to LH2 Bunker Fuel
• GCMD/BCG’s Fuel-Pathway Report vs. RE-Chain LCOH Data
• Technology reference — storage CAPEX and handling comparison