Ragnhild Bieltvedt Skeie

The HYway project contributes to the understanding of the climate and environmental risks and co-benefits of a hydrogen economy and aims to advise policymakers and industry on options for addressing those risks.

The development of green ammonia (NH3) has recently gained wide interest due to its potential to decarbonize ammonia production and as a carbon-free solution for energy storage and transportation. Green ammonia production is purely based on renewable energy sources and no carbon is associated with its use, e.g. as a chemical fertilizer, or when ammonia is combusted in an engine. However, the production and use of ammonia come with other climate and environmental challenges due to its alteration of the Earth’s nitrogen cycle.

Arctic-boreal regions are warming at a much faster rate than the global mean. Arctic-boreal ecosystems combined are the largest reservoirs of terrestrial carbon and have long snow covered seasons. As a result, processes involved in these ecosystems have a high significance for global climate.

In REGAME we will update chemistry transport models (FLEXPART, OsloCTM) to include the kinetic isotope effect (KIE) of methane (CH4), enabling better constraints on the CH4 budget (KIE is dependent on source/ sink). We will update the atmospheric inversion framework FLXINVERT to include novel use of satellite CH4 fields (Sentinel 5P). This will include significant changes to FLEXINVERT, which will also be applicable to other satellite data e.g. carbon dioxide (co₂) and improve the model capabilities to handle large data fields in general. With these upgrades we assess CH4 emissions from the major sources (wetlands, biomass burning, anthropogenic) at the global scale using all available data (e.g. ICOS, NOAA data, data on ebas.nilu.no). This data includes measurements from the Zeppelin Observatory in the Arctic, to Troll in Antarctica, i.e. from pole-to-pole.

Hydrogen is often considered a green energy carrier that has the potential to replace oil, but little is known about its environmental and climate impacts. Over the next three years, CICERO will therefore study what these impacts are.

ICOS (Integrated Carbon Observation System) is a programme within the European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures (ESFRI) list of European infrastructures.