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The Road To Decarbonization: Ammonia-Powered Trucks Take the Lead
By Haley
Zaremba -
Jan 22, 2023
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Amogy has unveiled the world's first ammonia-powered, zero-emissions
semi truck.
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Ammonia has advantages over hydrogen as a fuel source for the
shipping industry, such as ease of shipping and storage.
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The EPA has proposed new standards to decrease nitrous oxide
emissions in the trucking industry, which is causing concern in the
industry.
This week, the world’s first ammonia-powered, zero-emissions semi
truck was unveiled,
potentially signaling the dawn of a new era for the shipping and
transportation industry. Like Tesla’s semi truck, Brooklyn company
Amogy’s ammonia-powered truck holds about 900 kWh of energy. Unlike
the Tesla semi, it takes just about eight minutes to refuel. And,
according to Amogy, their new model has five times the system-level
energy density of batteries.
For some time now, hydrogen fuel cells have been touted as the future
power source of the shipping industry, but ammonia has several
benefits in comparison to hydrogen. For one thing, it exists as a
liquid at room temperatures, making shipping and storage a whole lot
easier for ammonia than hydrogen. “Hydrogen either needs to be heavily
compressed to around 700 bar, or else kept cryogenically cooled as a
liquid, to just 20.28 K (−252.87 °C; −423.17 °F),” a recent
report by
New Atlas explained, before adding that, “both of these are
energy-intensive processes.”
Like hydrogen, ammonia is only as clean as the energy that’s used to
make it. But green
ammonia holds
great promise for helping to decarbonize some of the most
fuel-intensive and high emissions industries that our economy is built
on. At present, transportation
is the single highest emitting sector in
the United States, representing 27% of overall greenhouse gas
emissions according to figures from the Environmental Protection
Agency (EPA). And over a quarter of transportation emissions come from
medium- and heavy-duty trucks.
Avoiding the worst impacts of climate change will require that the
United States, the country with the second-most greenhouse gas
emissions in the world after China, makes good on its climate
pledges. That will require a major transformation of the
transportation industry on a pretty short timeline. The EPA has been
wrestling with how to do this.
At the beginning of last year, the EPA proposed two different pathways
to drastically decreasing nitrous oxide [N2O] emissions
in the trucking industry: “a two-step process with standards getting
progressively tighter in model years (MY) 2027 and 2031, or a one-step
standard in 2027 that would be less aggressive in cutting emissions.” N2O
is a greenhouse gas that
accounts for just 7% of emissions, but which stays in the atmosphere
for over 100 years and has a warming impact 300 times stronger than
carbon dioxide. The
new EPA standards are
more than 80% stronger than the 2021 iteration, and the EPA says that
they will increase the lifespan of governed vehicles by 1.5 to 2.5
times, and yield emissions warranties that are from 2.8 to 4.5 times
longer than current standards.
This new ruling has caused significant
unease in
the trucking industry, according to transportation and shipping news
outlet Freight Waves. The Truck and Engine Manufacturers Association (EMA)
President Jed Mandel says that the EPA’s new ruling “is very stringent
and will be challenging to implement” and that “ultimately, the
success or failure of this rule hinges on the willingness and ability
of trucking fleets to invest in purchasing the new technology to
replace their older, higher-emitting vehicles.”
While every advance in low-emissions trucking technology and
infrastructure is an exciting and important step for the imperative of
decarbonizing national and global supply chains, the Tesla Semi and
the Amogy ammonia-powered truck are all but useless if they’re not
affordable and accessible for truckers and trucking companies. These
technologies are still in their nascency, however, and the hope is
that with continued improvements and targeted policy measures they can
soon be scalable enough to make a change that helps the planet without
hurting the
truckers that make it run.
Green Play Ammonia™, Yielder® NFuel Energy.
Spokane, Washington. 99212
www.exactrix.com
509 995 1879 cell, Pacific.
exactrix@exactrix.com
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