Originally this story Appears on Yale environment 360 and be part of Climate table cooperation.
In Minnesota, there is a research farm equipped with wind turbines that, when fully operational, boast an amazingly low carbon footprint. Wind powers a chemical plant that produces ammonia, which can not only be spread as fertilizer under turbines, but also fuels an experimental tractor, storing energy for a day without wind and — coming soon — will heat their grain drying barns. All do not generate CO2.
“For deep decarbonization in agriculture, you should switch to green ammonia,” said Michael Reese, director of the University of Minnesota. plan. University studies have shown that using green ammonia (“green” in the sense that it is made from renewable energy) for fertilizer, fuel and heat can reduce carbon emissions. of agriculture to 90% for maize and small cereal crops. “It was transformation,” Reese said.
Proponents of this alternative zero-carbon liquid fuel argue that green ammonia’s reach is extending beyond farms. They predict a vast new market for green ammonia as a fuel, eventually outstripping the planet’s already huge (and growing) need for ammonia as a fertilizer. A 2021 International Energy Agency report forecasts that to reach zero emissions by 2050, hydrogen-based fuels (including ammonia) will make up nearly 30% of transport fuels by 2050, up from essentially zero today. That report predicts that cars will run on batteries and airplanes run on biofuels, but ammonia will be crucial to shipping industryis currently responsible for 3% of global emissions and is trying to reduce that rate rapidly.
Ammonia is also one of the leading candidates for the storage and transport of energy from renewable power plants so that electricity is available when and where it is needed. The idea is to use renewable energy to produce green ammonia from non-fossil fuel sources, deliver it by pipeline or ship, and burn it in power plants with turbines customized to run on electricity. ammonia. While batteries are efficient, they are best suited for storing smaller amounts of electricity for hours or days; Oxford Institute for Energy Research 2020 report concluded that for large-scale, long-term energy storage, liquid ammonia is hard to beat. Countries including Japan, Australia, the Netherlands, and the UK have national plans to use green ammonia to store (and export) their renewable energy surpluses.
All told, chemist Douglas Macfarlane at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, predicts that ammonia production will increase to about 100 times more for many decades to come.
For now, however, ammonia production is anything but green. The world currently produces 175 million tons of ammonia per year, much of it used as fertilizer, using a centuries-old, energy-intensive industrial process that produces a lot of greenhouse gases: Industry: Industry This accounts for about 1 to 2% of global carbon emissions, making it one of the dirtiest places on the planet.
That will need to change if ammonia is to be part of the solution to the world’s climate change solution. To make sure all this ammonia is green, not dirty, is a huge task. Of course, ammonia is generated to store wind energy and solar energy will be produced using that renewable energy. But meeting fuel and fertilizer requirements will mean more renewable energy. Ammonia plants will need to change – or even reinvent – their production systems. And the engine will need to be reconfigured to run on the new liquid fuel. In the process, manufacturers and users will have to overcome barriers: Ammonia is toxic, and burning it can produce greenhouse gases even more potent than CO.2.
