Keeling Curve

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Project Summary / Description:

Nitricity was founded out of Stanford University in 2018 with a mission to decarbonize nitrogen fertilizer. We have developed a technology that produces nitrogen fertilizer using air, water, and electricity. This technology mimics the natural process of lightning for making fertilizer, and replaces an expensive, hazardous, and inefficient supply chain. By minimizing the need to ship, we focus on fertilizers that are best for fields and farmers, rather than fertilizers best for factories and freight. Ultimately, this breakthrough technology has the potential to decarbonize 1 Gt CO2eq per year by 2050 (from CO2 and N2O) and save farmers money on even the cheapest fertilizer in the world.

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Nitricity’s process makes a climate-smart nitrate fertilizer that mitigates emissions from 4 major mechanisms, 1) the process doesn’t require fossil fuels to produce fertilizer (1.6% of global GHGs) 2) there is no detectable N2O in the production process (0.3% of global GHGs), 3) distribution emissions are minimized (0.1% of global GHGs), and 4), this type of fertilizer, has been shown to emit less than half as much GHGs when applied compared to ammonia-based fertilizers (5% of global GHGs). All together, Nitricity has the potential to mitigate over 80% of the emissions asscociated with the production, distribution, and application of nitrogen fertilizers. 

The production process is electrified, and tied to renewable energy resources. It replaces the Ostwald process for making nitric acid, which is notorious for generating N2O emissions, a greenhouse gas 265 times more potent than CO2. A preliminary life cycle analysis indicates that Nitricity’s flagship fertilizer, calcium nitrate, mitigates 11 pounds of CO2eq per pound of N that we produce versus average industrial production of calcium nitrate fertilizer. 

The application of nitrogen fertilizers results in on-field N2O emissions, and has an even larger total impact on global GHGs due to the widespread use and overapplication of the wrong types of fertilizers. One major way to mitigate this is by using a fertilizer with a low emissions factor, like Nitricity’s calcium nitrate and other nitrate fertilizers, rather than ones with high emissions factors like ammonia and urea fertilizers. The ultimate application emissions are determined by a number of factors including soil type, application rate, water content, and crop type, but literature indicates that a 2-10x reduction in emissions is possible by using climate-smart nitrate fertilizers and sustainable application practices. Please reach out to Nitricity if you have questions or would like further details on the mitigation potential of their technology.

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Fertilizer is the lifeblood of civilization. Well fertilized land empowers communities because it increases the crop output ratio of the land and ultimately provides food security for members of those communities. Unfortunately, communities in developing countries have the least access to fertilizer in the world, which is resulting in significant deforestation in order to provide more low-yield cropland. Our project enables distributed fertilizer production, which can be deployed in developing countries much more easily than a heavily centralized incumbent-process facility. Distributed production facilities will also require managerial and technical personnel to operate, so this project will create jobs in historically economically disadvantaged regions with populations that are often most vulnerable to climate change and excluded from the climate movement.

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