Is it possible to create an ACME account without requesting a certificate? AFAICT is is not so you cannot use this method unless you have first requested a certificate with some other method. I hope I am wrong!

An account needs to be created before you can request a certificate. Some ACME clients might create the account for you implicitly when you request the first certificate, but in the background it still needs to start by registering an account.

`certbot register` followed by `certbot show_account` is how you'd do this with certbot.