Ammonia-to-clean power startup Amogy is expanding in Asia where demand for its technology is growing for powering AI and data centres.
US startup Amogy is expanding to Asia as it seeks to grow its ammonia technology beyond the maritime fuel market into power generation.
Amogy CEO Seonghoon Woo says Asian countries such as South Korea, Japan, Singapore and Taiwan are keen to use ammonia-to-power technology as they lack high-quality wind, solar and geothermal renewable resources common in its home market of the US.
In July, the company raised $23m to finance its Asia expansion. The round came on top of a $56m fundraising in January this year which saw several corporate investors including Aramco Ventures, BHP Ventures, MOL Switch and Samsung Heavy Industries participate.
The backers of the most recent round were Korea Development Bank and KDB Silicon Valley, with participation from new investors BonAngels Venture Partners, Pathway Investment, and JB Investment.
East Asian countries are more dependent on fossil-fuel-based power sources such as liquefied natural gas and coal. But demand for clean power is growing driven by new industries such as AI and data centres.
“We saw a great opportunity for us to apply our technology in the power sector, in addition to the maritime sector,” says Woo.
Amogy has developed a catalyst that provides an efficient way to separate hydrogen and nitrogen from ammonia. The hydrogen can be fed into an integrated fuel cell to generate power with zero carbon emissions.
The company has partnered with the South Korean city of Pohang to deploy an ammonia-fueled distributed power generation system of up to 40 MW, which is expected to enter commercial operations by 2029. South Korea has passed policies to encourage hydrogen investment such as the Clean Hydrogen Portfolio Standard and Distributed Energy Act.
Amogy last week also announced a partnership with GreenHarvest, a Taiwan-based renewable energy company, to build the first ammonia-to-power system in Taiwan.
Blue and green ammonia on the horizon
Ammonia can be transported more easily than hydrogen, which can be explosive and prone to leaks. But it is still largely produced using fossil fuels, creating greenhouse gas emissions in the supply chain. Woo says he expects to be able to start sourcing cleaner ammonia as projects come online that capture the carbon emissions during the ammonia production process.
So-called blue ammonia projects include ExxonMobil’s hydrogen, ammonia and carbon capture facility in Baytown, Texas, which is expected to produce one billion cubic feet of low-carbon hydrogen a day.
Green ammonia projects, which use renewable energy to power an electrolyser to produce hydrogen, which is then made into ammonia, are also under development.
“The clean ammonia industries are in the early phase of deployment. Clean ammonia will be coming to the industry as soon as 2026, 2027, which will enable the use of our technology as well, so that it becomes full scale decarbonisation,” says Woo.
