Methanol is attracting worldwide attention as an important industrial raw material for chemicals such as formaldehyde and MTBE. It can be not only used as additive to gasoline, but also a clean fuel without emissions of NOx and SOx. Thus, great demand for methanol is expected in the future. The objective of this study is to discuss the possibility of energy savings in methanol production systems by means of the exergy concept giving information of the quality of energy. As a result of evaluation of the conventional system, it is found that the steam reforming of methane accounts for about 70% of the total exergy consumption with the least efficiency of all processes. The results showed that improvement of the steam reforming process is most effective for saving energy. On the other hand, comparison of the obtained exergy consumption with a theoretical value showed quantitatively room for improvement in the methanol production process; total exergy consumption of the conventional methanol production system is 44 times as large as the theoretical minimum exergy consumption of the direct synthesis reaction, and 4.5 times as large as that of the conventional two step reaction system of steam reforming followed by methanol synthesis from CO and H-2.