Yahoo Finance Climate change: This startup aims to decarbonize ocean shipping by ‘converting ammonia to power'
Ammonia could be the carbon-free shipping fuel of the future, powering ocean vessels throughout the world's seas.
That could help slash emissions from ocean-going shipping, which accounts for 3% of worldwide greenhouse gases, almost entirely from burning oil products. But before ammonia can make its way into cargo ships' fuel tanks, a few things have to fall into place.
Amogy, a New York-based startup, is looking to solve some of the technological hurdles behind ammonia's deployment as a climate solution. In its latest Series B-1 funding round, Amogy raised $139 million from backers including the venture arm of Saudi Aramco and SK Innovations.
"We developed a technology, which is converting ammonia to power," Amogy CEO and co-founder Seonghoon Woo told Yahoo Finance Live (video above). "Ammonia has been discussed a lot, especially in the shipping industry, as a potential fuel because of its high energy density and availability. However, there has not been a technology converting ammonia to power efficiently and effectively. So that's the solution that this company is bringing to the market for the first time."
As Woo pointed out, ammonia is the second-most produced chemical by mass after sulphuric acid. And because it's used in other applications such as fertilizers, mature technologies already exist for storing and distributing it, unlike some other nascent fuel alternatives.
But ammonia has not yet been approved for use as a shipping fuel by the International Maritime Organization (IMO) and other regulators. As a result, its use as a shipping fuel has been limited to pilot demonstrations.
Woo explained that Amogy has demonstrated its technology in other vehicles, such as drones and tractors, and is now working to retrofit existing tugboats to pilot the fuel in maritime applications.
Environmental and safety risks
Although Woo was optimistic about the transformative potential of ammonia, there's still a lot to be learned about its application as an energy source.
"The net impacts of ammonia deployed at scale throughout the energy and industrial system are not known, so it’s hard to say whether it lives up to the claims," Paul Wolfram, a researcher at the Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, told Yahoo Finance. "There are a number of environmental and safety risks that haven’t been quantified to the degree that one would want prior to committing to large-scale deployment."
Ammonia theoretically has near-zero carbon emissions at its point of use. That could be instrumental in helping the IMO reach its goal of cutting emissions from international shipping by at least half of 2008 levels by 2025 and phasing out emissions entirely "as soon as possible in this century."
However, Wolfram explained, leakage or combustion could lead to fugitive emissions of another potent greenhouse gas: nitrogen.
"We estimate that if 0.4% of the nitrogen in ammonia would turn into N2O [nitrous oxide], directly or indirectly, ammonia combustion would have the same impact on the climate as current shipping fuels, in addition to other environmental impacts such as eutrophication [the accumulation of nutrients that leads to algal growth] and air pollution," he said.
Ammonia leakage rates from production, distribution, storage, and handling are "mostly unknown," Wolfram noted. Furthermore, not all ammonia is clean ammonia. Today, 94% of ammonia is produced using natural gas and coal.
But as the shipping industry pivots away from burning oil, many companies are starting to bet on ammonia, among other fuels and technologies, to fill the void.
A McKinsey survey of shipping companies found that one-third of respondents were unsure about how their fleets would be fueled in 2030 and 2050 and nearly half of respondents have already run pilot programs for low-carbon fuels.
That uncertainty leaves a lot of space for new players to enter the market. According to the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), the market for ammonia could grow four times larger by 2050 under the rapid energy transition scenario laid out in the Paris Agreement, and the largest area of growth is expected to come from the maritime sector.
To reach its clean energy potential, the production of green ammonia using renewable energy will have to scale rapidly and the environmental risks will need to be studied and addressed. That will come with higher costs at this stage of development.
"Our technology in the beginning will likely be more expensive compared to conventional technologies," Woo said. "However, we have really clear paths to reducing the cost dramatically over the course of the 10 years. So for example, in 2033, which is seven years from now, we are expecting the cost of our system to be compatible with the cost of the conventional and the propulsion systems used in the very time vessels."
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