Dr. Melissa Ball of Energy Impact Partners discusses technological unlocks required to bring decentralized green ammonia to cost parity with fossil-based ammonia.
Insight
Ball: Green tech startups falsely assume two-cent renewable power at 100% capacity
“If you're going to be in climate tech, you want to be green, and so you're almost certainly tethering yourself to a renewable source, which means your capacity factor isn't going to be a hundred percent. So it's kind of like having your cake and eating it, too…”
Assertion Supported
Ball: Ammonia transport costs can be double the levelized production costs
“Ammonia, you know, we did a deep dive on what those distribution costs could be, and, you know, you, depending on where you are in, in the U.S., or, and I'll stay U.S. Centered, but this is even more so outside the U.S., Those distribution and transport costs …”
Assertion Supported
Ball: Compressed gas hydrogen storage costs $0.30 to $1.20 per kg
“The levelized cost of hydrogen storage ranges from somewhere between 30 cents a kilo hydrogen to about a buck 20 a kilo hydrogen for compressed gas.”
Opinion
Ball: Decentralized thermochemical ammonia synthesis is the most advanced novel pathway
“Probably the most advanced we've seen is the thermochemical approach of this decentralized thermochemical processes to produce ammonia.”
Assertion Supported
Ball: Transport costs create a 25 percent price umbrella for decentralized ammonia
“You know, again, that five to 600 dollars a ton selling price, about maybe 20, 25% of that is transportation. So there is some budget, even within the U.S., for these decentralized approaches.”
Insight
Ball: Modular ammonia costs are driven by upstream hydrogen and nitrogen feedstocks
“I think we saw this a lot in the modular ammonia space where, you know, the secret sauce is on this low pressure, low temperature, relatively reactor. And that's a really nice to have, but what, you know, we found, you know, doing our own internal work is that…”