How about producing fertilizer without carbon emissions? – Innovation Toronto
Intensive agriculture is possible only if the soil is fertilised with nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium. While phosphorus and potassium can be mined as salts, nitrogen fertiliser has to be produced laboriously from nitrogen in the air and from hydrogen. And, the production of hydrogen is extremely energy-intensive, currently requiring large quantities of natural gas or – as in China – coal. Besides having a correspondingly large carbon footprint, nitrogen fertilizer production is vulnerable to price shocks on the fossil fuels markets.
The scientists state that the key to success is likely to be a combination of all these approaches depending on the country and on specific local conditions and available resources. In any case, it is imperative that agriculture make a more efficient use of nitrogen fertilisers, as Rosa stresses: “Addressing problems like over-fertilisation and food waste is also a way to reduce the need for fertiliser.”
In the study, the scientists also sought to identify the countries of the world in which food security is currently particularly at risk owing to their dependence on imports of nitrogen or natural gas. The following countries are particularly vulnerable to price shocks in the natural gas and nitrogen markets: India, Brazil, China, France, Turkey and Germany.
Decarbonising fertiliser production would in many cases reduce this vulnerability and increase food security. At the very least, electrification via renewables or the use of biomass would reduce the dependence on natural gas imports. However, the researchers put this point into perspective: all carbon-neutral methods of producing nitrogen fertiliser are more energy intensive than the current method of using fossil fuels. In other words, they are still vulnerable to certain price shocks – not on natural gas markets directly, but perhaps on electricity markets.
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