UK Company Says It Has Found The Green Fertilizer Sweet Spot

As the global community strives to achieve net-zero by 2050 emissions targets, efforts to decarbonize the fertilizer industry have assumed a high priority status. Attempts to simply outlaw the use of synthetic fertilizers and force farmers to convert to using organic substitutes like dung have proven difficult, and even catastrophic, as the nation of Sri Lanka experienced in 2022.

This lack of scalable natural alternatives is one major driver for the need to create green synthetic alternatives. The other key driver is the scale of the emissions themselves.

“Emissions from fertilizers, one of the hard-to-abate industries, total to more emissions from aviation and shipping combined,” ATOME CEO Olivier Mussat, CEO at UK-listed ATOME, told me in a recent interview.  Combine that with the finding in a 2023 study by the University of Cambridge that 48% of the world’s crops are grown using synthetic fertilizers, and it becomes clear that abating fertilizer emissions are a big challenge that must be resolved for the global net zero by 2050 goals to have any chance of success.

[Note: This story is also published at Forbes.com]

Green fertilizer refers to a type of fertilizer that is produced using renewable energy sources, such as hydropower, wind, or solar power, rather than relying on natural gas or other carbon-based fuel. This approach drastically cuts the carbon footprint associated with traditional fertilizer production.