Green fertilizer projects aim to nourish crops while cutting carbon footprint

A former power plant in Indiana is going to get new life as a manufacturer of “green fertilizer” that is designed to lower the carbon footprint of feeding crops.

Armed with a $1.56 billion loan commitment from the Energy Department, Wabash Valley Resources of West Terre Haute, Indiana, is refitting the power plant to use a petroleum byproduct known as pet coke as the main feedstock to produce ammonia. The plant would produce up to 500,000 metric tons of fertilizer annually, increasing supply and reducing farmers' input costs in the eastern Corn Belt. 

Slated to come online in 2027, it would be the only fertilizer-making plant in the state. In addition to using oil industry waste to make ammonia, carbon dioxide would not be released but buried.

“We’re essentially taking waste to capture energy yet not releasing CO₂ into the atmosphere,” says Greg Zoeller, vice president external affairs for Wabash Valley. The CO₂ will be buried in injection wells about 4,500 feet deep—well below the depth of water wells, coal mines and even bedrock.

“This is the perfect area for permanent storage of CO₂,” says Zoeller, adding that two approved wells are within four and eight miles of the plant, respectively.

Ammonia is a mixture of hydrogen and nitrogen and its production mostly involves fossil fuels that emit greenhouse gas. Ammonia itself doesn’t emit carbon when burned as fuel. 

Concern about carbon emissions in general prompts the development of ways to reduce their introduction into the atmosphere. Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, countries have been looking for other places to make ammonia. Russia is one of the world’s largest producers.

In the United States, such efforts have been backed and subsidized by provisions of the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act along with separate loan packages and guarantees from DOE.

CF Industries, the largest producer of ammonia in the world, plans to work with ExxonMobil to capture and store 500,000 metric tons of CO₂ from CF’s Yazoo City, Mississippi, plant beginning in 2028. As with the Indiana project, the CO₂ will be stored far underground.

While many such projects exploring “green” fertilizer in the U.S. can get a subsidy from the U.S. government, others aren’t relying on a direct subsidy. 

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ATOME, a UK developer, expects to begin producing calcium ammonium nitrate in Paraguay in 2027 by relying on hydroelectric power for the plant. It plans a similar project in Costa Rica.

The “green” aspect of the fertilizer will be the use of water to produce hydrogen via electrolysis. Electrolysis, rather than using coal or gas, fires a zero-carbon ammonia that will be  made into low-carbon fertilizer.

While some of the fertilizer produced in South America may make its way to Europe, most will remain in Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay. The region is the largest importer of fertilizer, relying mostly on Russia and China.

Distribution of ATOME fertilizer from Paraguay will be handled by Norwegian-based Yara. The company's commitment to buy 100% of production from the Paraguay plant is a strong indicator of anticipated demand even before production has started, according to company officials.

“The cheapest electricity is the only way to make green fertilizer cheap enough,” says ATOME CEO Olivier Mussat. “Paraguay’s energy costs are three times lower than in Texas or Europe.”

“In Costa Rica you have the same thing,” says Mussat, who began his career as an engineer with GE working on power and chemical plants.  “You have hydroelectric power, and you have a premium market which prides itself on being, let’s say, not green, but at least organic. Premium food brands have a higher incentive to buy low carbon fertilizer or zero carbon fertilizer. If you can decarbonize fertilizer that is much cheaper than just buying carbon credits.”

Terje Bakken, director of ammonia and fertilizer mrkets at ATOME, had been involved in running small green ammonia plants in Norway 20 years ago, according to Mussat. The process works. 

“We can do it at a bigger scale and with the right business environment,” Mussat says. That’s the difference cheaper hydroelectric power makes.ATOME CEO Olivier Mussat

Until recently, the emphasis on decarbonization had focused on the oil, gas and transportation sectors, according to Mussat. But the food sector created nearly a quarter of all the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. Of that quarter of emissions, fertilizer production and use represent about 5% of the world’s greenhouse gas emission. But that 5% is more than aviation and shipping combined.

“It’s the food companies, not the farmers, who are saying they will pay for premium fertilizer. For farmers it is more expensive, right,” says Mussat. Food companies are okay with the premium because their carbon footprint is much lower and the fertilizer cost in a loaf of bread, for instance, may be only 1%.

One competitive difference for Wabash Valley is the plant’s proximity to where most ammonia is used—in the Midwest. The company and farmers will benefit from lower distribution costs in an area of the country where they can sell their entire supply within 250 miles, according to Zoeller.

Additionally, conversion of an existing facility equipped with a gasifier, rather than building new, lowers costs. Using a waste product, pet coke, as feedstock for gasification lowers costs.

A key to the Wabash Valley plan was availability of a former Duke Energy power plant that would otherwise have been demolished. The plant, according to Zoeller, has a state-of-the-art gasifier—the vessel that mixes some type of carbon fuel with steam and oxygen to create a chemical reaction to create syngas. It is syngas that was burned in a turbine to create electricity.

Greg Zoeller of Wabash Valley There are more than 800,000 injection wells in the U.S. used to store some type of waste liquid. However, of the specific type of deep well that Wabash would use for CO₂, known as Class VI by the EPA, there are only four in Indiana and Illinois and only 11 total in the United States. There are 130 Class VI well permits being reviewed by the agency.

The increase in permits for this type of well is a result of the need to keep increased levels of carbon from the atmosphere. For example, the state of Minnesota has committed $7 million to support a green fertilizer facility through farmer cooperatives or other interested stakeholders.

Minnesota defines green fertilizer as any nitrogen-based fertilizer that contains hydrogen produced via electrolysis power and renewable energy, considered to be wind or solar.

In Washington, Atlas Asgro will build a green fertilizer plant near Richland. Like that in Paraguay, it will use electrolysis—splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen—as a substitute for fossil fuel. Hydrogen will combine with nitrogen to form fertilizer; oxygen will be released to the atmosphere.

Atlas Agrois is working with Northwest Hydrogen Hub, which will also receive up to $1 billion to develop hydrogen projects in Washington and Oregon. 

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