About Climate Positive
Candid conversations with the leaders shaping a more sustainable future. Hosted by Gil Jenkins, Hilary Langer, Guy Van Syckle, and Kenny Gayles.
E104: Cleaning up fertilizer, from factory to field | Nico Pinkowski, CEO of Nitricity
Mass production of fertilizer was one of the most important advances of the past century with roughly half the world's food supply depending on it, but it comes with a large shadow. Between manufacturing and field application, nitrogen fertilizer accounts for five to seven percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. The inefficiency is just as striking: global nitrogen fertilizer use efficiency sits at about 33%, meaning roughly two thirds of every tank a farmer buys never reaches the crop. It runs off into waterways, where it drives algae blooms and dead zones, or it volatilizes into the air becoming a high impact greenhouse gas. As this episode's guest puts it, imagine buying $100 of gasoline and pouring $66 of it on the ground. And because the industry is so centralized, a disruption on one side of the planet can double a farmer's single largest input cost overnight.
In this episode, Hilary and Guy are joined by Nico Pinkowski, co-founder and CEO of Nitricity, which is making liquid organic nitrogen fertilizer from almond shells, air, water and renewable power. Farmers can disburse the fertilizer through their irrigation systems, spoon-feeding nitrogen as the crop actually needs it rather than front-loading a season's worth of ammonia into the soil. The result is dramatically lower field emissions, far better nutrient uptake, and a product that competes on price with the animal byproducts that dominate organic farming today. They talk through the new plant Nitricity just finished in California's Central Valley, the multi-year fixed-price contracts that made it financeable, expansion into new geographies, and the reactor breakthroughs opening the door to decarbonize the conventional market.
Links:
