MEMBER NEWS: In November 2019, AEA Gold Member Proton Ventures announced that it had secured a 4 million Euro investment from Dutch "clean energy conglomerate" Koolen Industries.
Europe
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Gigawatt-scale electrolyzer manufacturing and deployment
ANNUAL REVIEW 2019: Electrolyzers have featured heavily at this year's Ammonia Energy Conference, which ended today. How much can innovation increase efficiency? How far can volume manufacturing drive down capex? How much could process integration with Haber-Bosch deliver improved ammonia production? How realistically can new, sophisticated strategies optimize variable and baseload power inputs? These technical questions are all important, but none defines profitability. While progress is being made on all these fronts of research and development, major industrial projects are still moving forward.
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Green Finance Prospects for Ammonia Energy
ANNUAL REVIEW 2019: Green finance, the deployment of capital to sustainable pursuits, has been gathering momentum for a decade. Kristoffer Olsen, now an independent consultant and formerly a member of the Ammonia Energy Association’s Board of Directors, argued in an August 2019 Ammonia Energy post that “Green Finance and Green Bonds can directly contribute to the decarbonisation of ammonia and future production of green ammonia fuel.” Other recent indications lend credence to Olsen’s assertion.
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Technology Advances for Blue Hydrogen and Blue Ammonia
ANNUAL REVIEW 2019: Blue hydrogen – defined as the version of the element whose production involves carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) – represents an alluring prospect for the energy transition. The primary “blue” feedstocks, natural gas and coal, currently set the low-cost benchmarks for storable energy commodities. With the addition of CCS, they are expected to set the low-cost benchmarks for low-carbon storable energy commodities. Blue ammonia is very much included in this frame of reference since CCS could be applied to the CO2 waste stream from the Haber-Bosch process. But neither blue hydrogen nor blue ammonia are sure things; a variety of technical, financial, regulatory, and social issues could stand in the way of their widespread adoption. But work on new technologies that have the potential to ease the way for blue products has come increasingly into view over the last twelve months.
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Ammonia in the Mix as an Industrial Energy Source
ANNUAL REVIEW 2019: The generation of heat for industrial processes accounts for approximately 10% of global greenhouse gas emissions – which means that finding ways to eliminate this climate footprint is among the pressing technology tasks on our societal to-do list. Developments over the last 12 months suggest that ammonia could play an important role in meeting this challenge.