Details of the Commission's comprehensive climate legislation package are now public. Relevant highlights include the inclusion of shipping into the EU ETS, a new tier system for fuel taxation and a carbon border adjustment mechanism. Also this week, Hydrogen Europe calls for an overhaul of the existing Guarantee of Origin (GO) system to address current shortcomings in clean hydrogen certification.
This April we presented a new episode in our monthly webinar series: Ammonia Energy Live. Every month we’ll explore the wonderful world of ammonia energy and the role it will play in global decarbonisation - with an Australian twist. For this episode we welcomed Geoff Ward, CEO of the Hazer Group. Hazer has been steadily developing their novel methane pyrolysis technique in Western Australia with a new low-carbon hydrogen production facility to begin construction later this year. Geoff joined us to reflect on Hazer’s journey so far, familiarise our audience with their processes and give his thoughts on what needs to be put in place for similar decarbonisation projects to succeed. And - of course - we asked Geoff where ammonia fits into Hazer’s future plans! Geoff was interviewed by Andrew Dickson (Development Manager of the Asian Renewable Energy Hub at CWP Global), and Darren Jarvis (Vice President of Strategic Project Development at Incitec Pivot).
Welcome to the Ammonia Wrap: a summary of all the latest announcements, news items and publications about ammonia energy. This week: the world's largest ammonia manufacturing complex begins decarbonising, a call for green hydrogen projects in Chile, new maritime decarbonisation forecast from MAN ES, decarbonised shipping at the Biden climate summit and Fertilizers Europe welcomes the new Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism.
Welcome to the Ammonia Wrap: a summary of all the latest announcements, news items and publications about ammonia energy. This week: the World Bank sees hydrogen and ammonia as key to decarbonising shipping, a new coalition for safe ammonia bunkering, Trafigura co-sponsors MAN's development of ammonia-fueled maritime engines, cracking plant a feature of the new Wilhelmshaven hydrogen hub, RWE and H2U to develop global hydrogen trading between Australia and Germany, Province Resources' West Australian mega-project grows to 8GW and South Africa's Hydrogen Society Roadmap a step closer.
Last week we presented the second episode in our monthly webinar series: Ammonia Energy Live. Every month we’ll explore the wonderful world of ammonia energy and the role it will play in global decarbonisation - with an Australian twist. This episode we welcomed Sammy Van Den Broeck, VP Project & Portfolio at Yara Clean Ammonia. Sammy was invited to give his thoughts on the key challenges and opportunities in the global ammonia transition, and explain to us why Australia is so important to Yara's future clean ammonia plans. Interviewing Sammy were Jacinta Bakker (Research Fellow in the MacFarlane Laboratory at Monash University) and Allison Gwilt (Senior Project Engineer, Future Fuels at Origin Energy).
What key challenges lie ahead as ammonia producers embark on the transition to low and zero-carbon ammonia? What are the big producers already doing to smooth and later accelerate this transition? On November 19, 2020, the Ammonia Energy Association (AEA) hosted a panel discussion moderated by Steve Crolius from Carbon Neutral Consulting, as well as panel members Sammy van den Broeck from Yara, Ashraf Malik from CF Industries, and Trevor Williams from Nutrien as part of the recent Ammonia Energy Conference.
At the start of this month, a coalition of eleven corporations launched a new advocacy body, Hydrogen Forward, with the explicit purpose of lobbying the United States government to pursue a national hydrogen strategy. "While Europe and East Asia have committed to investing hundreds of billions of dollars into hydrogen solutions, the U.S. is the only major market without a national hydrogen strategy. A comprehensive approach is critical because it provides a much-needed framework to enable fast, large-scale adoption."
The European Commission has added two building blocks to its burgeoning structure of economic and environmental policy initiatives. In separate communications on July 8, the EC announced An EU Strategy for Energy System Integration and A Hydrogen Strategy for a Climate-Neutral Europe. Together the two strategies present a practical pathway toward a sustainable energy economy.
The COVID-19 pandemic is a human tragedy of epic proportions. It directly affects the life and livelihoods of people all around the world as an unprecedented healthcare and economic crisis. It is clear by now that COVID-19 marks an inflection point or “black swan” event in history that will have a shaping influence on society and the economy for many years to come; a post COVID-19 era will begin. In the same way that the developing renewable energy industry significantly benefited from the economic stimulus packages to address the financial crisis of 2008/2009, we now have the opportunity to kick-start the next important phase of global CO2 emissions reduction through support of the developing CO2 Capture, Utilization and Storage (CCUS) & Clean Hydrogen Economy. Many of these clean technologies have been proven at industrial scale and implementation has started. Still, commercial projects will continue to need financial incentives for broad deployment that will enable accelerated technology maturation and reductions in project risk and cost. With the support from COVID-19 stimulus packages, the private sector will be able to execute CCUS & Clean Hydrogen projects in the near-term, secure and create jobs, grow the economy and mitigate the risk of “green swan” climate change events through significant CO2 emissions reduction.
