Earth911 Podcast: Stephen Crolius on Ammonia's Role as a Post-Carbon Fuel for Shipping

Stephen Crolius is the co-founder and president of Carbon Neutral Consulting, a New York-based sustainable business consultancy. He and his team recently released The Ammonia Report, an analysis of the prospects for using ammonia as a maritime fuel instead of heavy fuel oil, the petroleum-derived traditional source of maritime energy. So much of what we buy today is shipped halfway around the world. Sometimes, the components of a product are shipped from the U.S. to Asia, processed and then shipped back. Almost all of that shipping activity burns oil today, which accounts for about 1.8% of humanity's annual carbon footprint, according to the European Commission’s Climate Action office. We need to change the fuels used to power sea-going freight vessels to sustainable alternatives, and several are emerging. One of those is ammonia.<br /><br />Stephen previously served with the Clinton Foundation’s Climate Initiative and as president of the Ammonia Energy Association. Ammonia has been used in fertilizers since the early twentieth century, a development made possible by the emergence of the Haber-Bosch process for mass producing the chemical, which revolutionized farming. Now ammonia is coming into use as a fuel or an intermediate storage medium for energy that can be processed to yield pure hydrogen in fuel applications. You can follow the developing story of ammonia fuels at <a href="https://www.ammoniaenergy.org/articles/" rel="noopener">https://www.ammoniaenergy.org/articles/</a>.