3 ms·

That latter point is false, though except in a trivial sense. Hydrogen can be and is easily made with electricity. There is plenty of clean electricity availabl

That latter point is false, though except in a trivial sense. Hydrogen can be and is easily made with electricity. There is plenty of clean electricity available to do it. Also, 50% of the energy does not come from fixed nitrogen. Majority is from the Sun.

TheSpiceIsLife 5y ago
There currently aren’t enough green hydrogen > ammonia manufacturing plants on the planet to do this though. Building the necessary renewable energy and ammonia plants and infrastructure is technically trivial in that we needed approximately no innovation as the tech already exists. The scaled of the problem is immense.
- Robotbeat 5y ago
  It’s not immense compared to almost anything else we’ve done (such as the transition to air conditioning… air conditioners consume about 6% of US electricity). To replace all US ammonia production would require less than 5% of US electricity (see my other post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29842105 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29842105). Heck, you can get about halfway there just on the nuclear power plants in the US that have been shut down in the last couple decades! (Works well with intermittent renewables, too, as hydrogen production can be throttled without much penalty.)
  - TheSpiceIsLife 5y ago
    In what way is building forty odd new nuclear reactors not an immense undertaking? Or the equivalent in new renewables, if that’s your preference.
    - Robotbeat 5y ago
      Again, we used to double grid capacity every decade or so. An extra 5 percent is nothing in comparison to what we did doubling electricity production each decade from roughly the 40s through the 70s. (And that’s about 10-20 new nuclear reactors, not 40. A fraction of our current nuclear fleet.)
tuatoru 5y ago
> That latter point is false, though except in a trivial sense. Hydrogen can be and is easily made with electricity. You mean, except in a $Trillion sense. One or two demonstrator plants don't prove anything, except that the advantages are underwhelming, if they exist at all. How do we globally get there from here? Who is made worse off? Who benefits? How long does it take? "Exercises for the student" are not always so simple.

TheSpiceIsLife 5y ago

There currently aren’t enough green hydrogen > ammonia manufacturing plants on the planet to do this though. Building the necessary renewable energy and ammonia plants and infrastructure is technically trivial in that we needed approximately no innovation as the tech already exists. The scaled of the problem is immense.

Robotbeat 5y ago
It’s not immense compared to almost anything else we’ve done (such as the transition to air conditioning… air conditioners consume about 6% of US electricity). To replace all US ammonia production would require less than 5% of US electricity (see my other post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29842105 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29842105). Heck, you can get about halfway there just on the nuclear power plants in the US that have been shut down in the last couple decades! (Works well with intermittent renewables, too, as hydrogen production can be throttled without much penalty.)
- TheSpiceIsLife 5y ago
  In what way is building forty odd new nuclear reactors not an immense undertaking? Or the equivalent in new renewables, if that’s your preference.
  - Robotbeat 5y ago
    Again, we used to double grid capacity every decade or so. An extra 5 percent is nothing in comparison to what we did doubling electricity production each decade from roughly the 40s through the 70s. (And that’s about 10-20 new nuclear reactors, not 40. A fraction of our current nuclear fleet.)

tuatoru 5y ago

> That latter point is false, though except in a trivial sense. Hydrogen can be and is easily made with electricity. You mean, except in a $Trillion sense. One or two demonstrator plants don't prove anything, except that the advantages are underwhelming, if they exist at all. How do we globally get there from here? Who is made worse off? Who benefits? How long does it take? "Exercises for the student" are not always so simple.