Wind Energy to Ammonia: Gauging policy, alignment, and business scale

A Promising Approach to Reduce Corn Production’s Carbon Footprint 

Nitrogen fertilizer accounts for approximately 36 percent of the fossil energy footprint from corn production. Grain drying, fueled by methane, adds another 42 percent.

If we were to replace the fossil-based nitrogen fertilizer with electrolysis-based green ammonia from wind or solar-to-ammonia developments and use green hydrogen as a fuel for grain drying, we could readily remove 78 percent of the fossil energy footprint from corn production.

Electrolysis-based green ammonia can replace fossil-fuel-derived blue ammonia for nitrogen fertilizer since they are identical molecules. Green ammonia and green hydrogen offer drop-in, zero-carbon solutions that farms across the Upper Midwest could incorporate quickly, as these fertilizer and fuel markets already exist.

This project completed a feasibility study to investigate the commercial viability of electrolysis-based green hydrogen and ammonia in relation to Minnesota and neighboring states.

Key takeaways

• Agricultural areas of Minnesota are rich in wind energy, which could be used to produce a key agricultural input — fertilizers — locally. This would have the added benefit of using  renewable energy resources that might otherwise be curtailed.
• The rise in use of urea, a fertilizer, speaks to the potential value of colocation of green ammonia facilities with ethanol production facilities.  Ethanol production results in carbon dioxide as a waste product, which can be used  in combination with green ammonia to create urea.
• Major cost drivers for green ammonia production are the capital costs to build the facility and the operational costs to keep the plant running while delivering a return on investment. Operationally, green ammonia production is cost-competitive with gray (methane-based) ammonia production, and it adds potential benefits in terms of reducing vulnerability to price shocks resulting from variations in natural gas prices.
• Frameworks that could help drive down the cost of electrolyzers from $700/kWh to closer to $200-300/kWh or could support increasing the utilization factor of facilities (from 30 percent to 60 percent or higher) would help this technology satisfy the expectations of commercial financing.
• Hydrogen and ammonia can be used for many purposes beyond fertilizer. Commercializing a system for fertilizer, a known market and technology, could begin to scale deployment, enabling future applications for energy storage, transport, and use across the state and region.