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Scotland’s experts on farmer co-ops and food industry collaboration, we work with food and farming businesses to make them more profitable, competitive, and sustainable - #workingtogether to shape the future, today.

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Is a greener future possible with green ammonia?

28 October 2024

Our latest 'How We Think' piece is from David Michie who is mulling over the potential for green fertiliser.


Fertiliser is costly for an agricultural business, and not just financially. It currently makes up a large percentage of food and drink’s overall carbon footprint.

SAOS’s C2Network has been working with farmers to explore the possibilities of producing their own fertiliser on farm, using renewable energy, with the aim of removing dependence on (highly volatile) international markets, and creating a more secure fertiliser supply and, in turn, greater food security.

Green ammonia holds the possibility of a greener future for Scottish agriculture. A fossil fuel-free nitrogen fertiliser produced using green hydrogen (produced from renewable energy), it and other forms of green technology are attracting heavy investment by large companies. Some farm businesses in Scotland have large onshore wind turbines, and we want to know if there are technologies available that would make green ammonia production financially viable for farmers.

C2N’s project brought together a University of Edinburgh Masters student with a group of farmers, modelling different technologies and turbine sizes to assess feasibility at the scale of renewable energy produced by ‘real-life’ farm businesses. He interrogated scale, costs and capital requirements, using various hypothetical figures to develop a model for green ammonia production – not an easy process with so many components. The figures obtained gave an initial snapshot of feasibility, rather than a case for investment, and formed the basis of the student’s dissertation on Climate Change Finance and Investment.

He found that a 5,600-kW system (powered by three turbines) would cost between £15-20m and produce around 1,500 tonnes of green ammonia annually. To put this in perspective, this could fertilise about 8,000 ha of spring barley crops each year. The cost to produce the nitrogen, however, would be over 50% higher than the current cost of ammonium nitrate - a lot more, but too much?

Reducing the carbon footprint of arable farming is difficult. Practices that reduce emissions on an area basis, for the year the crop is grown, can incur costs elsewhere - reducing yield, and increasing emissions elsewhere in the rotation that can chip away at any positive progress.

There is no silver bullet for reducing emissions. Farmers must make advances through multiple marginal gains. End markets have ambitious net zero targets which sound positive and impressive, but there is a cost to these that must be met. Governments too have ambitious climate targets. Government support for businesses, to help with capital expenditure and higher operating costs, could support a just transition to net zero.

These technologies are relatively new and there may well be further advances that reduce costs and, potentially, higher market prices or future policy support may cover them. Hopefully large fertiliser manufacturers will invest in this technology at a scale to produce price-competitive green fertiliser. Or perhaps the cost will always be too much too bear?

We at SAOS would love to support the formation of an energy co-op, producing green ammonia for its members, helping Scottish agriculture move towards net zero while securing fertiliser production in Scotland. But it would have to be financially viable, and much more research and development is needed.

At SAOS, we are driven to find solutions to difficult problems. SAOS’s C2N project is all about driving positive change in agriculture through collaboration. We hope that by bringing farmers and academics together, and sharing the evidence found, we can help move the Scottish arable sector further along the hard path of emissions reductions.

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