Alternatives to Electricity for GW-Scale Transmission and Firming Storage for Diverse, Stranded Renewables: Hydrogen and Ammonia

COP15, Copenhagen, December 09, failed partly for lack of a credible, comprehensive vision for how we may, and must soon, “run the world on renewables”. We cannot, and should not try to, accomplish this entirely with electricity transmission. The world’s richest renewable energy (RE) resources — of large geographic extent and high intensity — are stranded: far from end-users with inadequate or nonexistent gathering and transmission systems to deliver the energy. Electricity energy storage cannot affordably firm large, intermittent renewables at annual scale, while gaseous hydrogen (GH2) and anhydrous ammonia (NH₃) fuels can: GH2 in large solution-mined salt caverns, NH₃ in surface tanks, interconnected via underground pipelines in RE systems for gathering, transmission, distribution, and end use. Thus, we need to think beyond electricity as we plan new “transmission” systems for bringing large, stranded RE resources to distant markets as annually-firm C-free energy, to empower subsequent efforts to COP15. Recent press has extolled the global RE vision, but without adequate attention to the diverse transmission and storage systems required for achievement. [21] At GW scale, renewable-source electricity from diverse sources can be converted to hydrogen and byproduct oxygen, and/or to NH₃, pipelined underground to load centers for use as vehicle fuel and combined-heat-and-power generation on the wholesale or retail side of the customers’ meters. The ICE, CT, and fuel cell operate very efficiently on GH2 and NH₃ fuels. USA has extensive extant NH₃ pipeline and tank storage infrastructure.