Abstract: Methanol is a kind of important chemical raw material that has extensive uses. The processes of synthesizing methanol by using different feedstocks，such as natural gas，coal-water slurry，coke-oven gas，yellow phosphorus tail gas and acetylene off-gas were analyzed and compared by means of the emergy accounting methodology. The results showed that the process of synthesizing methanol from coke-water slurry was better than other processes because it had a low value of environmental loading ratio，middle value of emergy yield ratio，high value of emergy investment ratio，middle value of emergy index of sustainability and low value of transformity of methanol. To meet the increasing demand for methanol，China，which is short of natural gas and petroleum，should make good use of the plentiful coal to actively develop the process of synthesizing methanol from coke-water slurry.