Clean ammonia, produced by reacting either “blue” or “green” hydrogen with nitrogen, is emerging as one of the most highly touted low-carbon energy sources of the future, thanks largely to massive tax incentives provided by the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). Skeptics may question the extent to which clean ammonia — and clean hydrogen, on which it’s based — can realistically take market share from natural gas and coal as leading power-plant fuels over the next 20 to 30 years, but there’s a lot to be said for them and, as wind- and solar-power developers have already come to appreciate, billions of dollars in governmental support can do wonders. In today’s RBN blog, we continue our look at the growing list of U.S. clean ammonia projects now under development.
It's Time
The global push to decarbonize power generation, shipping and other energy-intensive sectors of the economy and the Biden administration’s efforts to heavily incentivize the development of low-carbon energy sources have resulted in a growing list of big clean ammonia projects in the U.S. Almost all of these proposed multibillion-dollar production facilities are located along the Texas-Louisiana coast, a region that offers easy access to natural gas supply, carbon sequestration sites, and export markets. In today’s RBN blog, we continue our look at the burgeoning market for “green” and (especially) “blue” ammonia with a review of the largest production facilities now under development.
For some time now, clean ammonia proponents have been talking up its potential as a very-low-carbon alternative for power plants, ships and other hydrocarbon consumers. Still, rock-solid plans for U.S. projects to produce large volumes of ammonia from clean hydrogen remained few and far between. Until lately, that is, with the recent uptick in project announcements spurred on, in large part, by the supercharged tax credits for carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) in the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and the newly firmed-up efforts by power generators in Japan and South Korea to make clean ammonia an important part of their fuel mix going forward. In today’s RBN blog, we discuss the progress that clean ammonia has made since the IRA became law and the growing list of projects advancing to a final investment decision (FID), construction and production.