Alaska´s renewables-source ammonia fuel energy storage pilot plant: Toward community energy independence

Alaska´s 720,000 people live in over 200 “energy islands” with no electricity grid connection to North America. Smaller communities have no road connection to each other, the rest of Alaska, or the continent. Most energy is imported: diesel for electricity generation and heat; gasoline for local transportation. Fig. 1. All Alaskans might obtain an annually-firm supply of most of their energy, for all purposes, by converting Alaska´s diverse, stranded, renewable energy (RE) resources to liquid NH3 fuel, transporting and storing it at low cost in common steel propane tanks, recovering the RE via stationary combined-heat-and-power (CHP) plants, in internal combustion engine (ICE) and combustion turbine (CT) gensets, and via fuel cells, and as transportation fuel. Alaskans could achieve a significant degree of energy independence, and perhaps export our abundant, stranded renewables as “green” NH3 fuel.