Today most methanol is produced from methane through syngas. Trinidad and Tobago is the world's largest methanol producer, with exports mainly to the United States. The feedstock for the production of methanol comes natural gas.
The conventional route to methanol from methane passes through syngas generation by steam reforming combined (or not) with partial oxidation. Alternative ways to convert methane into methanol have also been investigated. These include:
* Methane oxidation with homogeneous catalysts in sulfuric acid media
* Methane bromination followed by hydrolysis of the obtained bromomethane
* Direct partial oxidation of methane with oxygen, including trapping of the partially oxidized product and subsequent extraction on copper and iron exchanged Zeolite (e.g. Alpha-Oxygen)
* Microbial conversion of methane
* Photochemical conversion of methane
All these synthetic routes emit the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide CO. To mitigate this, methanol can be made through ways minimizing the emission of CO. One solution is to produce it from syngas obtained by biomass gasification. For this purpose any biomass can be used including wood, wood wastes, grass, agricultural crops and their by-products, animal waste, aquatic plants and municipal waste. There is no need to use food crops as in the case of ethanol from corn, sugar cane and wheat.
:Biomass → Syngas (CO, CO, H) → CHOH
Methanol can be synthesized from carbon and hydrogen from any source, including fossil fuels and biomass.  CO emitted from fossil fuel burning power plants and other industries and eventually even the CO contained in the air, can be a source of carbon.  It can also be made from chemical recycling of carbon dioxide, which Carbon Recycling International has demonstrated with its first commercial scale plant. Initially the major source will be the CO rich flue gases of fossil-fuel-burning power plants or exhaust from cement and other factories. In the longer range however, considering diminishing fossil fuel resources and the effect of their utilization on Earths atmosphere, even the low concentration of atmospheric CO itself could be captured and recycled via methanol, thus supplementing natures own photosynthetic cycle. Efficient new absorbents to capture atmospheric CO are being developed, mimicking plants' ability. Chemical recycling of CO to new fuels and materials could thus become feasible, making them renewable on the human timescale.
Methanol can also be produced from CO by catalytic hydrogenation of CO with H where the hydrogen has been obtained from water electrolysis.  This is the process used by Carbon Recycling International of Iceland. Methanol may also be produced through CO electrochemical reduction, if electrical power is available. The energy needed for these reactions in order to be carbon neutral would come from renewable energy sources such as wind, hydroelectricity and solar as well as  nuclear power. In effect, all of them allow free energy to be stored in easily transportable methanol, which is made immediately from hydrogen and carbon dioxide, rather than attempting to store energy in free hydrogen.
:CO + 3H → CHOH + HO
or with  electric energy
:CO +5HO + 6 e → CHOH + 6 HO
:6 HO  → 3HO + 3/2 O + 6 e
:Total:
:CO +2HO + electric energy → CHOH + 3/2 O
The necessary CO would be captured from fossil fuel burning power plants and other industrial flue gases including cement factories. With diminishing fossil fuel resources and therefore CO emissions, the CO content in the air could also be used. Considering the low concentration of CO in air (0.04%) improved and economically viable technologies to absorb CO will have to be developed. For this reason, extraction of CO from water could be more feasible due to its higher concentrations in dissolved form. This would allow the chemical recycling of CO, thus mimicking nature's photosynthesis.
In large-scale renewable methanol is mainly produced of fermented biomass as well as municipal solid waste (bio-methanol) and of renewable electricity (e-Methanol). Production costs for renewable methanol currently are about 300 to US$1000/t for bio-methanol, about 800 to US$1600/t for e-Methanol of carbon dioxide of renewable sources and about 1100 to US$2400/t for e-Methanol of carbon dioxide of Direct Air Capture.