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  • Review Article
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Ammonia as a renewable energy carrier from synthesis to utilization

Nature Reviews Clean Technology (2025)Cite this article

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Abstract

Ammonia has potential to play a key role in large-scale, long-term storage and transport of renewable energy. Renewable energy generation, particularly from solar and wind sources, has increased substantially but faces challenges such as intermittency and decentralization. Energy storage technologies are vital for addressing these issues, with chemical energy storage, especially ammonia, offering long-term (weeks) and large-scale (10–1,000 MW) energy storage. In this Review, we explore the role of ammonia in the energy landscape, focusing on its synthesis and utilization. Ammonia has advantages over hydrogen, such as higher volumetric energy density (12.7 MJ l−1) and simpler storage requirements (readily liquefied at ~10 bar or −33 °C). It can be synthesized using renewable electricity and later decomposed to release hydrogen or used directly in fuel cells, including direct-ammonia fuel cells, indirect-ammonia fuel cells and ammonia solid-oxide fuel cells. We show that although decentralized ammonia synthesis under mild conditions offers potential for localized, low-carbon production, it remains limited by high energy costs and scalability challenges, underscoring the need for breakthroughs in catalyst efficiency and system design. The successful integration of ammonia into renewable energy systems will require coordinated efforts across technology development, policy support and infrastructure expansion.

Key points

  • Ammonia is a promising carbon-free energy carrier with high volumetric energy density and ease of storage, suitable for large-scale and long-duration renewable energy storage and transport.

  • Mild-condition ammonia synthesis, including electrochemical, plasma-catalytic and tandem plasma-electrocatalytic routes, offers potential for decentralized and flexible production using renewable electricity.

  • Metal-mediated electrochemical nitrogen reduction has demonstrated high selectivity and stability, but scaling to industrial current densities and lifetimes remains a key challenge.

  • Plasma-based and tandem plasma-electrocatalytic approaches enable operation under ambient conditions and modular deployment, but energy efficiency and catalyst performance need further improvement.

  • Ammonia can be decomposed to supply hydrogen for fuel cells or combustion, with ongoing efforts focused on lowering the reaction temperature and replacing costly ruthenium-based catalysts.

  • Realizing cost-competitive, sustainable ammonia production and its full potential as a carbon-free energy carrier will require integrated advances in catalysts, reactors and system-level design, supported by policy and infrastructure to drive scalable deployment.

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Fig. 1: Energy storage technologies and the role of ammonia as an energy carrier.
Fig. 2: Ammonia as an energy carrier in energy storage and conversion.
Fig. 3: Ammonia synthesis under mild conditions.
Fig. 4: Catalyst design and economics of ammonia decomposition.
Fig. 5: Mechanisms and operational strategies for ammonia fuel cells.
Fig. 6: Efficiency of ammonia fuel cell technologies.

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Acknowledgements

X.F. acknowledges support from the National University of Singapore start-up grant. P.X. acknowledges funding from National Key Research and Development Program of China (2023YFA1508103) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (22278365). X.T. acknowledges funding from the European Union’s Horizon Europe Research and Innovation Programme under grant agreement no. 101083905 and the UK Research and Innovation Horizon Europe Guarantee Fund (no. 10055396).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Materials Science and Engineering, National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore

    Zuxin Wen  (温祖鑫) & Xianbiao Fu  (付先彪)

  2. College of Chemical and Biological Engineering, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China

    Bing Huang  (黄兵), Ke Wang  (王可) & Pengfei Xie  (谢鹏飞)

  3. Department of Electrical Engineering and Electronics, University of Liverpool, Liverpool, UK

    Yaolin Wang  (王耀霖) & Xin Tu  (屠昕)

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  1. Zuxin Wen  (温祖鑫)
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  2. Bing Huang  (黄兵)
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  4. Ke Wang  (王可)
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  5. Xin Tu  (屠昕)
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  6. Pengfei Xie  (谢鹏飞)
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  7. Xianbiao Fu  (付先彪)
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Contributions

Introduction (X.F. and Z.W.); Ammonia as an energy carrier (X.F. and Z.W.); Ammonia synthesis under mild conditions (X.F., X.T., Z.W. and Y.W.); Ammonia decomposition for hydrogen production (P.X., K.W. and X.F.); Ammonia fuel cells (P.X., B.H. and X.F.); Overview of the review (X.F., P.X. and X.T.). All authors discussed and edited the full manuscript.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Xin Tu  (屠昕), Pengfei Xie  (谢鹏飞) or Xianbiao Fu  (付先彪).

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Nature Reviews Clean Technology thanks Hoang-Long Du, Kwiyong Kim, Chenglin Yan and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Wen, Z., Huang, B., Wang, Y. et al. Ammonia as a renewable energy carrier from synthesis to utilization. Nat. Rev. Clean Technol. (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44359-025-00102-9

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