Pricing Fertilizer Emissions Cuts Climate Pollution Without Making Food Expensive - CleanTechnica

The article from CleanTechnica discusses how pricing the emissions associated with fertilizer use can significantly reduce agricultural greenhouse gas emissions without substantially increasing food prices. Fertilizer, particularly nitrogen-based fertilizer, represents a large portion of farm costs and is responsible for about half of global crop agriculture emissions, including both manufacturing and field emissions. Despite its large role in emissions, changes in fertilizer use primarily affect farm-level costs, which constitute only a fraction of the final consumer food price. This dynamic means that incentivizing farmers to reduce nitrogen use or improve nitrogen delivery can sharply cut emissions while having a muted effect on grocery bills. The article explains that most nitrogen fertilizer starts as ammonia, produced conventionally from fossil methane via steam methane reforming, a process that emits significant carbon dioxide and methane leakage. While decarbonizing ammonia production through green ammonia (using renewable electricity) or blue ammonia (fossil-based hydrogen with carbon capture) can reduce manufacturing emissions, these approaches do not address the largest source of emissions: nitrous