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Yeah but what if you account for the synthetic fertilizer which is produced primarily from natural gas? And if it isn't produced from natural gas it requires ne

Yeah but what if you account for the synthetic fertilizer which is produced primarily from natural gas? And if it isn't produced from natural gas it requires near 100x as much electricity, which still currently comes from fossil fuels. If we produced all our fertilizer without natural gas we would consume the current total world's energy production.

philipkglass 7y ago
That is incorrect. World ammonia production in 2016 was 175 million tonnes. Producing that much ammonia -- the basis for all synthetic nitrogen fertilizers -- requires about 31 million tonnes of hydrogen. At present this hydrogen is indeed mostly made from natural gas. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ammonia_production https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ammonia_production As of 2011, it required 50 kilowatt hours to produce a kilogram of hydrogen by electrolysis of water, or 50 megawatt hours per tonne: https://www.energy.gov/eere/fuelcells/doe-technical-targets-hydrogen-production-electrolysis https://www.energy.gov/eere/fuelcells/doe-technical-targets-... That comes out to a total of 1550,000,000 megawatt hours, e.g. 1550 terawatt hours, to make 31 million tonnes of hydrogen. World electricity consumption in 2016 was 20,863 terawatt hours: https://www.iea.org/statistics/electricity/ https://www.iea.org/statistics/electricity/ Producing the world's synthetic fertilizer starting from electricity instead of natural gas would require about a 7.4% increase in world electricity production: (20863+1550) / 20863 = 1.074. It is true that this would benefit the climate only if the extra electricity generation were based on low-emissions sources like hydroelectricity, wind, nuclear, or solar. On the larger point, I think that corn-to-biofuel is a very poor use of money, land, and indirect fossil fuel inputs.

2 ms·

Yeah but what if you account for the synthetic fertilizer which is produced primarily from natural gas? And if it isn't produced from natural gas it requires ne

by AngryData 7y ago

philipkglass 7y ago
That is incorrect. World ammonia production in 2016 was 175 million tonnes. Producing that much ammonia -- the basis for all synthetic nitrogen fertilizers -- requires about 31 million tonnes of hydrogen. At present this hydrogen is indeed mostly made from natural gas. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ammonia_production https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ammonia_production As of 2011, it required 50 kilowatt hours to produce a kilogram of hydrogen by electrolysis of water, or 50 megawatt hours per tonne: https://www.energy.gov/eere/fuelcells/doe-technical-targets-hydrogen-production-electrolysis https://www.energy.gov/eere/fuelcells/doe-technical-targets-... That comes out to a total of 1550,000,000 megawatt hours, e.g. 1550 terawatt hours, to make 31 million tonnes of hydrogen. World electricity consumption in 2016 was 20,863 terawatt hours: https://www.iea.org/statistics/electricity/ https://www.iea.org/statistics/electricity/ Producing the world's synthetic fertilizer starting from electricity instead of natural gas would require about a 7.4% increase in world electricity production: (20863+1550) / 20863 = 1.074. It is true that this would benefit the climate only if the extra electricity generation were based on low-emissions sources like hydroelectricity, wind, nuclear, or solar. On the larger point, I think that corn-to-biofuel is a very poor use of money, land, and indirect fossil fuel inputs.