It’s totally ready for primetime, according to the climate cult
Japan’s new net-zero project will use more energy than it produces
The dream of a carbon-free fuel is driving an investment boom in hydrogen and ammonia projects. Japan, for example, has pledged to reduce its emissions in line with the Paris Agreement by 2050, and plans to generate 10% of its energy needs using hydrogen and ammonia by then.
For Japan, the potential of using these fuels to generate electricity is appealing. As an island country, Japan has limited space for wind and solar farms, and is surrounded by deep waters that make importing electricity by cables difficult. Meanwhile, the 2011 earthquake that caused a nuclear plant meltdown in Japan forced a turn away from nuclear energy. The country currently depends on oil, gas, and coal imports to power its economy, contributing to it being the the fifth largest emitter of greenhouse gases, according to the World Bank.
Two demonstration projects, which will scoop up $392 million of the funding from JERA and the Japanese government, plan to convert existing coal-fired power plants to using a combination of ammonia and coal, aiming for a 50% split between the two fuels by 2029.
In a post on LinkedIn, Paul Martin, a co-founder of the Hydrogen Science Coalition, which aims to inform public investments, called the ammonia-coal projects “wasteful greenwashing” that will squander the energy that goes into producing ammonia. Martin has been sounding the alarm about the hype around hydrogen as a fuel as more industries buy into the idea of a hydrogen economy that will make carbon emissions vanish for industries as wide-ranging as steel, aviation, and two-wheeled vehicles.
According to Recharge, a trade publication for the renewable energy industry, it takes 14.38 megawatt-hours (MWh) of energy to produce one metric ton of green ammonia. Burning that ton produces 5.16 MWh of electricity for consumption—a third of what it took to make it. Use the ton of ammonia in a coal-fired plant, and that drops even further, to 1.96 MWh, “making it an incredibly inefficient method to produce electricity,” writes Recharge.
They keep looking for all these pie in the sky “green” projects, which climate cultists will then call “greenwashing”. They might be viable at some point in the future, and are worth researching on a small scale, but, until they are actually workable, don’t deploy them. Don’t replace reliable, efficient, affordable, dependable energy with unproven, expensive, unreliable energy.
Read: Bummer: Japan’s New Net Zero Project Uses More Energy Than It Produces »