Re:Temperatures in France cross 45°C threshold for first tim...
by philipkglass on Saturday June 29, 2019 @02:15PM
(#20313953)
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.
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.
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-...
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/
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.