Using Hydrogen and Ammonia Fuels via Underground Pipelines
Humanity's greatest challenge at present is converting the world's largest industry from around 85% fossil to 100% renewable energy (RE) sources as quickly as we prudently and profitably can. Nothing less will allow us to escape the likely synergistic consequences of large-scale fossil fuel combustion, including rapid climate change and global warming, accelerating sea-level rise, ocean acidification, species extinctions and violent human conflicts. Although large amounts of RE could be produced, existing electricity grids are not capable of transmitting this energy to where it is needed. The author argues that rather than just extending electricity grids it would be worth looking at alternatives (such as hydrogen and ammonia carried via underground pipelines) for storage and transmission of RE.
By Bill Leighty, The Leighty Foundation, Juneau, Alaska, USA
Jacobson and Delucchi have demonstrated that we can run the world on wind, water and solar (WWS) energy [ref. 1]. The wind energy of the 12 Great Plains states, if fully harvested on about 50% of these states’ aggregate land area, transmitted to distant markets, and guaranteed to be available (‘firmed’) at an annual scale with storage, could supply the entire annual energy demand of the USA (about 10,000 terawatt-hours, TWh). However, the existing Great Plains electric transmission export capacity is insignificant relative to this resource. Any large, new electric transmission systems, or fractions thereof dedicated to wind energy, will:
