To achieve methane production from sustainable sources and milder conditions, one idea involves conducting the reaction in stages through an intermediary C1 molecule capable of yielding methane. Methanol emerges as a viable candidate for this intermediary because it is the C1 compound with the closest oxidation state to methane. It can be produced from CO2 hydrogenation, 5 a process implemented in Iceland with the "George Olah CO2 to renewable methanol plant" demonstrates the maturity of the process. Nevertheless, the reduction of the C-O bond of methanol is challenging and requires most of the time heterogeneous metal catalysts working under harsh conditions (typical conditions use 300-400°C, under 0.5-40 bar of H2). In the homogenous phase, Sato imagined in 1987 a reaction to form methane from methanol in the presence of two equivalents of a strong acid (HI) and a platinum catalyst (Scheme 1, top). Although the reaction conditions are harsh, this strategy remains, to our knowledge, one of the few homogeneous paths, together with hydrosilylation, 9 to produce methane starting from methanol. In a broader context, many strategies are used for directly reducing alcohols to alkanes in organic synthesis, including the Barton-Mac Combie reaction, the use of hydrosilanes, 10 the oxidation-Wolff Kischner sequence, 11 the dehydration-hydrogenation sequence, 12 and others. However, these methods do not apply to methanol and require relatively toxic reagents and/or generate waste that adds to processing challenges. As an alternative to these shortcomings, we propose to reduce methanol with formic acid (FA) via the intermediate formation of methyl formate, FA being itself obtainable from CO2 electroreduction 14 or hydrogenation (Scheme 1, bottom Methyl formate is readily obtained by esterification of FA with methanol. When using it as a liquid surrogate for methane, the main challenge relies in designing an efficient decarboxylation of this alkyl formate. Only few examples have been reported in the literature for the decarboxylation of organic formates and they mostly concern activated benzyl formates (Scheme 2). In 1970, Hall used palladium on carbon at 200 °C to convert benzyl formate to toluene with a yield of 97%. Watanabe used benzyl formate as a benzylating reagent for arenes through decarboxylation using [Ru3(CO)12] at 200 °C. However, the reactive benzyl cation or radical formed under these conditions can activate the C-H bond in benzene, making recombination with the hydride to form toluene challenging with [Ru3(CO)12] alone. In 2015, Fleischer demonstrated a single-step esterification and reductive decarboxylation from benzylic alcohols and formic acid using a palladium complex and an acid additive. To our knowledge, the only example of activation of the C-O bond of an alkyl formate other than benzyl formate has been reported by Jenner, who showed that under CO, [Ru3(CO)12], and methyl iodide as an additive, methyl formate isomerizes to acetic acid at 200 °C. Interestingly, minor quantities of methane were also formed as side-products. Herein, we report on the selective decarboxylation of methyl formate into methane, its scale up, and the extension of the catalytic methodology to other alkyl formates.