Low-carbon methanol (LCM) is a promising hydrogen carrier that can reduce the overall transportation and storage costs associated with the industrial use of H2 as a chemical feedstock or fuel. Herein, LCM refers to methanol produced via processes that emit lower greenhouse gases (by 90% or more) relative to conventional methanol production derived from fossil fuels like pipelined natural gas or coal. LCM production pathways can valorize stranded methane as well as from sources such as biomass and biogas (e.g., landfill and digester gases). The distributed nature of these stranded feedstocks lends themselves well to methanol synthesis within a smaller-scale, decentralized infrastructure. While process intensification and relatively cheaper feedstock can support these distributed productions, forgoing economies of scale can significantly increase the cost of conventional upgrading steps such as distillation. Fortunately, these upgrading steps may be unnecessary by targeting specific applications, where high methanol purities are not required, thereby lowering the holistic cost and carbon intensity of an overall process.Here, we consider methanol as a hydrogen carrier and its conversion to H2 at the point of use through an electrolytic process by experimentally comparing the oxidation of methanol, of varying purity levels (e.g., grade (99.9+% purity) and crude forms) using a proton exchange membrane (PEM) electrolyzer. In this study, the supply of crude methanol derives from a distributed gas-to-liquid process, developed by M2X Energy Inc. The impurity content is speciated and quantified within the crude methanol sample, which is used directly with water co-reactants to evaluate the effect of impurity type and concentration on electrolytic performance on commercial Pt–Ru catalysts. Our experimental results show that about 1 wt% of C2–C5 alcohols in the starting crude methanol readily poison the catalyst, leading to an increased electricity consumption by 5.1–9.8 kWh per kg H2 produced when operating the electrolyzer at high current densities (>200 mA cm−2). A sensitivity analysis is developed according to the measured energy penalty, which can be used to decide whether bypassing methanol distillation provides economic benefit based on site-specific electricity and distillation costs.