Liquid Ammonia as Fuel – Another Article

Here’s another interesting article on liquid ammonia as fuel. The author, Dr. Paul A. Curto, a retired NASA scientist residing in Potomac, MD, has a wonderfully lucid writing style. Give me a Ph.D. who writes like a real person any day!

My only issue here — and it’s a criticism of myself as well, as I’ve done this many times personally — is the statement that liquid ammonia will create 30 million jobs. That’s not incorrect, per se, but it fails to address the question: Who’s going to hire these people? The government? Some blend of the public and private sectors? Why? By what mechanism can we create an environment in which there will be sufficient incentive for the private sector to embrace ammonia with a full-on commitment?

The answer, of course, goes back to the old “internalizing the externalities” argument. Until we, as a civilization, pay the full and true costs of the carbon-based energy we’re producing and consuming, there is no reason on Earth to considering any other solution. But making that happen is a political impossibility. How far we are away from looking at this issue fairly? The EPA and the DoE don’t even list ammonia as a fuel — that’s should give you some idea.

Having said all this, I think we need to agree that the Obama administration has really opened things un in terms of renewable energy. Obama’s popularity is falling — due, I believe,  to the horrible compromises that have left no one happy: shoddy, half-way healthcare reform, ineffective financial reform, and a foreign policy that no one could possibly like. But a great number of new conversations — and even investments — are happening in the energy space that never, ever would have taken place a few years ago.