Terraform Industries is making cheap synthetic natural gas from sunlight and air.
After the success of our team in building an end-to-end demonstration of our fuel synthesis process, aspects of the future are coming into focus.
Terraform is emerging from its R&D phase into its value generation phase. That’s right – it’s time to make money! This necessity is not motivated by greed, but by the recognition that it is impossible to rapidly deliver a complete industrial stack for synthetic fuel production at global scale without churning out enormous value to every person on Earth. Terraform’s success has positive externalities, including solving long term CO2 excess and energy scarcity, and looking like a gold mine.
While the team is hard at work building our first commercial-scale Terraformer and preparing for field deployment at a nearby site, it is time to lay out a comprehensive road map for the successful execution of our vision.
Terraform started, for pure technical expediency, with synthetic natural gas, but we’ve made no secret of our longstanding ambition to own the production of every kind of hydrocarbon in every market on Earth (and beyond!).
For each of the following entries, we list market size in annual sales in 2023 – not including the substantial future growth in many of these industries. We also list the year when we intend to externalize this capability as a standalone product.
Near-Term Priority Commercial Opportunities
Electrolyzer: The Cornerstone of Green Hydrogen Production
The Terraform Electrolyzer produces the cheapest green hydrogen on Earth.
Market size: $3b. Market entry: 2025.
Hydrogen Gas (H2): A Key Input for Industrial Applications
Terraform’s green hydrogen is competitive with gray and blue hydrogen, and will serve applications in chemicals, fertilizers, and metallurgy.
Market size: $240b. Market entry: 2025.
Methane Terraformer: Clean, Synthetic Natural Gas from Anywhere
Combining our electrolyzer and CO2 direct air capture (DAC) with a methane reactor, the Terraformer converts any patch of land into a carbon-neutral and fossil-free natural gas well.
Market size: $1.5t. Market entry: 2026.
Natural gas (CH4): A Drop-In Replacement for Fossil Fuels
Our synthetic methane provides a chemically identical drop in augmentation for fossil gas supplies, carbon neutral, and manufacturable anywhere on Earth – not just in oil-rich places.
Market size: $1.8t. Market entry: 2025.
Mid-Term Priority Commercial Opportunities
Direct Air Capture: Scaling Carbon Removal Solutions
Terraform’s proprietary DAC captures CO2 from the air anywhere on Earth.
Market size: $3b. Market entry: 2025.
Carbon Dioxide Gas (CO2): A Growing Market for Industrial Carbon
Relatively small as an isolated market, DAC will become humanity’s plants as the default source of industrial carbon, a critical feedstock for synthetic fuels and chemicals.
Market size: $11b. Market entry: 2025.
Methanol Terraformer: A Versatile, Renewable Liquid Fuel
Integrating our Electrolyzer & DAC systems with a methanol reactor, this system converts sunlight into a valuable liquid chemical feedstock that is energy-dense and easily transportable globally.
Market size: $2.5t. Market entry: 2027.
Methanol (CH3OH): The Foundation of Future Hydrocarbons
Serves as a versatile chemical feedstock for numerous applications including, fuels, solvents, or as a precursor to other hydrocarbon products via well-understood processes.
Market size: $31b. Market entry: 2026.
Methanol-Derived Products: Unlocking the Remaining Petrochemicals and Fuels
Methanol can be readily converted into numerous petrochemical products via well-understood catalytic pathways with acceptably high yield. 12-15% of current petrochemical use goes into polymers, durable stores of carbon that will previously have been in the atmosphere, and one of the few cash-flow positive mechanisms for carbon dioxide removal (CDR). A non-exhaustive list:
– Dimethyl ether (DME, CH3OCH3). Market size: $9b. Market entry: 2027.
– Ethylene (C2H4). Market size: $140b. Market entry: 2027.
– Propane (C3H8). Market size: $100b. Market entry: 2028.
– Gasoline (C7-C11). Market size: $1.4t. Market entry: 2028.
– Kerosene (C9-C16). Market size: $390b. Market entry: 2028.
– Diesel (C10-C22). Market size: $225b. Market entry: 2028.
Off-Grid Solar Development: One-Stop-Shop for Cheap Electrons
In addition to selling Terraformers to solar developers, we are also in the process of standing up our own solar development capability similarly focused on radically accelerating cost-reductions ahead of the market so that the entire process from sunlight and land through to hydrocarbon production is provided by a single entity.
Market size: $250b. Market entry: 2026.
Longer-Term Priority Commercial Opportunities
Terraformer Factory of Factories: Building the Future of Global Fuel Production
Over the next two decades, the world will need hundreds of Terraformer factories. Terraform Industries will complete the journey from making cheap green hydrogen with our electrolyzers, natural gas from hydrogen, Terraformers to make natural gas, factories to make Terraformers, through to factories to mass produce the tooling necessary to set up more factories.
Market size: $300b. Market entry: 2029.
We currently have no plans to verticalize into polysilicon production.