European fertiliser crops use US ammonia made with shale gasoline, investigation unearths

The coastal town of Freeport, Texas is a dense tangle of steel pipes, tanks and towers. Located 60 miles south of Houston, it’s house to a sprawling petrochemical advanced – probably the most greatest and maximum polluting in the United States.

Among its amenities is a plant devoted to the manufacturing of ammonia, a colourless compound of nitrogen and hydrogen and a key element in fertilisers extensively used on business arable farms – together with on fields of barley, wheat and maize throughout Europe.

Chemicals giants Yara and BASF opened the manufacturing unit to nice fanfare in 2018, promising “cost-efficient” and “sustainable” ammonia manufacturing. Unlike standard crops, which use hydrogen comprised of herbal gasoline, this manufacturing unit would make use of a hydrogen “byproduct” from a close-by Dow plant generating elements for plastic, they stated, serving to to take on the fertiliser business’s sizeable carbon footprint.

But an investigation by way of DeSmog, Data Desk and the Guardian unearths that in spite of those inexperienced guarantees, the Yara Freeport plant is depending on hydrogen comprised of US shale gasoline – some of the environmentally and socially destructive fossil fuels – to fabricate its ammonia in Texas.

Analysis of pipeline and allow paperwork lines the supply of this gasoline loads of miles west of Freeport to the Permian Basin – the 2nd greatest gas-producing area in the United States.

Experts stated Yara and BASF’s declare the manufacturing procedure used to be gas-free used to be “not true at all”. While the recycling of hydrogen leads to power financial savings general, the gasoline must be changed with fossil gasoline, which means that Yara Freeport not directly drives call for for gasoline.

Despite those hyperlinks to fracked gasoline and unsure carbon financial savings, the investigation displays this ammonia is being shipped to fertiliser factories in Europe.

Yara – which stays Europe’s greatest business purchaser of herbal gasoline and is globally chargeable for emissions similar to 16 coal-fired energy crops each and every yr – claims it’s “committed to reducing emissions” and “mitigating climate change”.

Yet shale gasoline extraction via fracking releases massive volumes of the potent greenhouse gasoline methane and a couple of poisonous chemical compounds and pollution into the air and water.

Ammonia manufacturing’s gasoline call for is predicted to triple within the subsequent a long time, pushed by way of a booming fertiliser industry lately estimated at about $200bn. The use and manufacturing of fertiliser is already a big contributor to local weather breakdown, growing extra emissions than aviation and transport blended.

Efforts to take on fertiliser emissions in Europe seem to have stalled since an formidable discounts pledge used to be introduced in 2021.

“European countries and companies claim to be feeding the world with ‘clean’ fertilisers and fuelling the future with ‘clean’ energy,” says Taylor Hodge, an agrochemicals campaigner from the Washington-based team the Center for International Environmental Law. “In reality, they’re offshoring the pollution, costs, and risks to communities in the US Gulf south.”

Yara’s plant in Freeport is the corporate’s first funding on US soil. The Norwegian chemical compounds massive – Europe’s greatest fertiliser manufacturer – stated in its joint release press liberate with the German multinational BASF that its use of hydrogen byproduct would scale back the environmental have an effect on of 750,000 tonnes of ammonia manufacturing a yr.

Pipeline maps and allow paperwork display the hydrogen supplying Yara’s plant will also be traced again to fracked gasoline saved at Mont Belvieu, an unlimited salt dome containing dozens of caverns full of herbal gasoline liquids from a number of shale gasoline basins together with the Permian.

From Mont Belvieu, the fracked gasoline is piped 90 miles south to Dow’s ethylene plant in Freeport, simply metres from the ammonia plant, the place an extensive steam cracking procedure produces each ethylene and hydrogen.

Yara claims the Freeport plant’s use of byproduct hydrogen reduces emissions from chemical manufacturing by way of 25%, however professionals say that whilst such financial savings are imaginable, they don’t move a long way sufficient.

“Just because it’s a byproduct doesn’t mean it’s clean,” says Paul Martin, a chemical engineer with Spitfire Research, a Toronto-based consultancy specialising in business decarbonisation.

While Yara can declare it’s the usage of a extra “sustainable” byproduct, Dow’s plant has to make use of extra fracked gasoline to gasoline its furnace to exchange the misplaced warmth power it could differently have generated from burning its hydrogen in-house.

According to Martin, this could quantity to about 1.1m kg of herbal gasoline a yr being fed to the cracker furnaces to switch the misplaced warmth power from hydrogen. He due to this fact says that whilst using byproduct hydrogen is extra environment friendly general, decreasing the volume of fossil fuels required to provide Yara’s ammonia, it’s “not true at all” to mention the ammonia manufacturing is gas-free, since it’s also riding up Dow’s use of herbal gasoline.

Yara’s use of fracked gasoline makes a mockery of Yara’s “green” enlargement in Europe and undermines its makes an attempt at “sustainable” US manufacturing, in line with Hodge.

“The Freeport facility is making ammonia out of hydrogen derived from fossil gas – plain and simple,” she says. “The flow of feedstocks from plastic production and other petrochemical operations makes it clear how deeply these dirty industries are intertwined. Yara’s claims mislead the public about their climate- and community-harming emissions.”

Yara not too long ago closed two of its greatest European ammonia crops, in France and Belgium. Despite this, the corporate maintains that “a strong European fertiliser industry is crucial not only for ensuring food security in Europe and globally but also for enabling Europe to lead the green transition” and has highlighted fresh investments in “green ammonia” created the usage of renewable power at crops in Norway and the Netherlands.

Yara has communicated little about how its European amenities are the usage of ammonia imported from its US plant, however DeSmog and Data Desk had been in a position to track ammonia shipped around the Atlantic Ocean from Yara’s Freeport facility to plenty of key European fertiliser crops.

Analysis of customs and transport information unearths that a few quarter of Yara Freeport ammonia is exported out of doors of the United States, with greater than 90% of this shipped to Europe to be made into fertiliser.

These fertilisers – used for the whole thing from wheat to potatoes – are shipped onwards to Asian and European markets.

In 2023, Ireland won about 14% of all its fertiliser imports from the amenities, whilst the United Kingdom won about 8% and Spain nearly 6%.

The investigation “exposes the bitter truth” of the business, in line with Raj Patel, a analysis professor on the University of Texas in Austin and panel skilled on the IPES-Food coalition, who stated a focal point on inexperienced hydrogen fertiliser era didn’t deal with underlying problems round fertiliser use, and referred to as for insurance policies that as an alternative centered aid.

“They don’t touch the root problem – the overuse, pollution and potent greenhouse gas emissions happening on farms,” he stated. “We’re applying 21st-century technology to preserve 20th-century farming problems.”

“While fertiliser giant Yara markets ‘green solutions’, it’s actually pioneering new frontiers for fracking and fossil fuels. Our food system is becoming Big Oil’s emergency escape hatch.”

A Yara spokesperson stated: “Yara is a leader in the transition to lower-carbon fertilisers and low-emission ammonia. Profitable decarbonisation is a top strategic priority, and since 2005, we have reduced our greenhouse gas emissions by about 45%. Ammonia produced at Yara’s Freeport plant has always relied on hydrogen derived from natural gas, supplied by third parties. Still, the configuration of the plant makes it both one of the lowest emitters of pollutants and one of the lowest carbon intensity plants in the US.”

BASF and Dow didn’t reply to requests for remark.