International Energy Agency (IEA)

Hydrogen Certification 101, the Hydrogen Council’s new report, provides a helpful summary of key certification terminology and concepts. It is the latest report to advocate for mutual recognition as a solution to inconsistency in energy policy, while also delving into practical measures to support the fundamental design principles of certification schemes.

Electrolysis-based ammonia production peaked worldwide around 1970, before the economies of scale and cheap gas feedstock led to its decline. With decarbonization and climate-neutral industrial processes now a critical priority, electrolysis-based ammonia production has re-emerged as a long-term solution. From a base of 10,000 tonnes per year worldwide production in 2020, as much as 100 million tonnes per year of electrolysis-based ammonia could be produced by the end of this decade, driven by a dramatic roll-out of renewable energy generation and installed electrolyzer capacity.

The Role of Low-Carbon Fuels in the Clean Energy Transitions of the Power Sector forecasts a significant role for low-carbon hydrogen and ammonia in decarbonising the power sector, and highlights the promising results of co-firing trials to date (both coal power plants and gas turbines). The report also outlines some key next steps to enable the widespread use of these low-carbon fuels.

In August, Robert Howarth and Mark Jacobson, respectively from Cornell and Stanford Universities, published “How green is blue hydrogen”, an examination of the lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) of blue hydrogen, i.e., hydrogen from steam methane reforming with carbon dioxide capture and storage (CCS). How valid were the assumptions behind the study, were the calculations correct and can a realistic case be argued for blue hydrogen going forward?

Last week the International Energy Agency released Energy Technology Perspectives 2020. The report has an upbeat tone, envisioning a high degree of feasibility for the development and deployment of relevant technologies. For those working in the sustainable energy field, though, the aspect of greatest interest may be the relative weights placed on fossil fuels, bioenergy, and hydrogen.

For years, many people — myself included — have been saying that ammonia consumes 55% of the hydrogen produced around the world. Although there are many authoritative sources for this figure, I knew that it was likely out of date. Until now, I had overlooked the International Energy Agency (IEA) 2019 report, The Future of Hydrogen, which provides up-to-date (and publicly downloadable) data for global hydrogen demand since 1975. According to the IEA, ammonia represented almost 43% of global hydrogen demand in 2018; refining represented almost 52%, and "other" demands accounted for 6%.

ANNUAL REVIEW 2019: Ammonia.  A hazardous chemical, no doubt.  But is it too hazardous to use as an energy vector?  This is a legitimate question that must be addressed as other aspects of the ammonia energy concept advance.  It is also a question whose unique context can be evoked with two other questions: Haven’t the safety issues already been identified and resolved over the last 100 years of widespread agricultural and industrial use?  And even if they have, how will the general public react when proposals for expanded ammonia infrastructure suddenly appear? The earliest tip of this particular iceberg came into view this year when the Dutch naval architecture firm C-Job released Safe and Effective Application of Ammonia as a Marine Fuel.

ANNUAL REVIEW 2019: An item in the last Annual Review described an upwelling of attention for ammonia energy from mainstream media outlets.  Over the last 12 months, the process of 'mainstreaming' has started to spread to another important constituency: governments.

To the Authors of The Future of Hydrogen: First I would like to thank you for an excellent report.  I have devoted two Ammonia Energy posts to The Future of Hydrogen.  If you read them, you will see that my appraisal is overwhelmingly positive.  But I am writing this letter because I take issue with your characterization of ammonia's hazard profile. I hereby submit that your discussion in this regard is inaccurate and unhelpful.   

Last week the International Energy Agency released The Future of Hydrogen, a 203-page report that “provides an extensive and independent assessment of hydrogen that lays out where things stand now; the ways in which hydrogen can help to achieve a clean, secure and affordable energy future; and how we can go about realising its potential.” In this, the first part of a two-part article, the report's overall strengths are considered.  The second part will focus on the report's discussion of ammonia as a contributor to the emerging hydrogen economy.

The International Energy Agency has completed two reports that examine the economics of hydrogen and ammonia production based on wind and solar electricity generation.  Both reports were written by IEA Consultant Julien Armijo under the supervision of IEA Senior Analyst Cédric Philibert.  One focuses on China and formalizes the findings and conclusions that were the subject of a February 2019 Ammonia Energy post.  The other focuses on Chile and Argentina.  Both reports cast an encouraging light on the near-term cost-competitiveness of green ammonia vs. conventionally produced brown ammonia in specific national markets.

September 10–14 gave us five remarkable events both evidencing and advancing the rise of hydrogen in transportation and energy. Any one of them would have made it a significant week; together they make a sea change.

The United States Congress passed a measure on February 9 that could galvanize the production of low-carbon ammonia in the U.S.  The measure, included within the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2018, amends Section 45Q of the Internal Revenue Code, titled “Credit for Carbon Dioxide Sequestration”.  That section, originally adopted in 2008, created a framework of tax credits for carbon capture and sequestration.  45Q’s impact in the intervening years has been minimal, an outcome attributed by experts to the relatively low prices assigned to CO2 sequestration and the fact that tax credits would be allowed only for the first 75 million tonnes of sequestered CO2.  The new legislation increases the tax credit per tonne of CO2 placed in secure geological storage from $20 to $50, and for CO2 used for enhanced oil recovery from $10 to $35.  It eliminates the credits cap altogether.  With these changes, it now seems possible that low-carbon ammonia could find itself on an equal economic footing with “fossil” ammonia – and this could have consequences well beyond American agricultural markets.

The International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), in partnership with the International Energy Agency (IEA) and Renewable Energy Policy Network for the 21st Century (REN21), released a report this month entitled "Renewable Energy Policies in a Time of Transition." The 112-page document is a comprehensive survey of technologies, policies, and programs that have current or prospective roles in the global transition to a sustainable energy economy.  For the ammonia energy community, one of its conclusions stands out in vivid relief: "Developing P2X is crucial because it plays a key role in decarbonising long haul road transport, aviation and shipping sectors that are difficult to decarbonize ... The overall recommendation for developing P2X is to focus on the development of ammonia for the shipping sector as well as long haul road transport, where few or no competing low carbon technologies exist and P2X is expected to be economically viable."

This morning in Beijing, China, the International Energy Agency (IEA) launched a major new report with a compelling vision for ammonia's role as a "hydrogen-rich chemical" in a low-carbon economy. Green ammonia would be used by industry "as feedstock, process agent, and fuel," and its production from electrolytic hydrogen would spur the commercial deployment of "several terawatts" of new renewable power. These terawatts would be for industrial markets, additional to all prior estimates of renewable deployment required to serve electricity markets. At this scale, renewable ammonia would, by merit of its ease of storage and transport, enable renewable energy trading across continents. The IEA's report, Renewable Energy for Industry, will be highlighted later this month at the COP23 in Bonn, Germany, and is available now from the IEA's website.

In the last 12 months ... The research community has made great progress toward solving the "selectivity challenge" in electrochemical ammonia synthesis. Although, rather than an actual solution, mostly what we have is a range of sophisticated work-arounds that succeed in making this problem moot.

The International Energy Agency (IEA) has just published Energy Technology Perspectives 2017, the latest in its long-running annual series, subtitled "Catalysing Energy Technology Transformations." In this year's edition, for the first time, ammonia is featured in two major technology transformations. First, ammonia production is shown making a significant transition away from fossil fuel feedstocks and towards electrification, using hydrogen made with electrolyzers. And, following this assumption that sustainable ammonia will be widely available in the future, the IEA takes the next logical step and also classifies ammonia "as an energy carrier," in the category of future "electricity-based fuels (PtX synthetic fuels)." The inclusion of this pair of technology transformations represents a major step towards broader acceptance of ammonia as an energy vector, from the perspectives of both technical feasibility and policy imperative.

Let’s say there is such a thing as the “hydrogen consensus.” Most fundamentally, the consensus holds that hydrogen will be at the center of the sustainable energy economy of the future. By definition, hydrogen from fossil fuels will be off the table. Hydrogen from biomass will be on the table but the amount that can be derived sustainably will be limited by finite resources like land and water. This will leave a yawning gap (in the U.S., 60-70% of total energy consumption) that will be filled with the major renewables -- wind, solar, and geothermal -- and nuclear energy. This may be as far as the consensus goes today, but more detail is now emerging on the global system of production and use that could animate a hydrogen economy.