In many ways, the natural gas shortages and price spikes that came with last week’s Deep Freeze had nothing at all to do with hydrogen. There were no “green” hydrogen plants that froze up in the cold, no withdrawals of stored hydrogen into distributed local fuel cells backing the power grid, no shortages of fuel for hydrogen vehicles. None of that occurred because hardly any of that infrastructure exists just yet. But that doesn’t mean there was no link between last week’s natural gas market and existing forms of hydrogen production, namely “gray” hydrogen used to produce ammonia, most of which is used in the manufacture of fertilizers, and which makes up about a quarter of the hydrogen market. In fact, there was a strong connection, one that highlights the flexibility of industrial natural gas use during price spikes and possibly exposes a vulnerability in gray hydrogen production. Today, we continue our series on hydrogen with a look at how the ammonia industry responded to the recent spike in natural gas prices.
Flip the Switch – Natural Gas Price Spike Curtails Ammonia Plants, Linking Hydrogen and Gas Markets
