How green ammonia is made
Ammonia is a chemical made from nitrogen and hydrogen. Farmers use most of it as nitrogen fertilizer, the substance that lets crops grow bigger in the same field. The standard process, called the Haber Bosch process, pulls nitrogen from the air and splits hydrogen out of natural gas by heating it under pressure. Green ammonia uses the same Haber Bosch chemistry but gets its hydrogen from electrolysis, which splits water into hydrogen and oxygen using electricity. When a wind farm supplies that electricity, the ammonia carries no natural gas at all, and its price stops moving with the price of gas.
What the wind route costs
Both ranges come from the same 2025 study. The wind figures assume a site among the best 2% in the world for wind speed. The low end is the cost when the plant can speed up and slow down to follow the wind. The high end is the cost if it must run at a constant rate instead.
Show the numbers
| Wind powered ammonia | 925 to 1,250 dollars a tonne |
| Gas powered ammonia | 400 to 700 dollars a tonne |
A 2025 study in the journal Nature Chemical Engineering put a number on the gap using named wind and solar sites rather than a general estimate. At a wind site among the best 2% in the world for wind speed, a plant built to speed up and slow down and follow the wind can make ammonia for 925 dollars a tonne. A plant that instead runs at a constant rate, which means building more turbines and a bigger factory to cover the times the wind is not blowing, costs up to 1,250 dollars a tonne. The same study puts the market price of gas made ammonia at 400 to 700 dollars a tonne. That makes wind powered ammonia roughly 30% more expensive at the low end, when the plant can flex with the wind, and up to about 80% more at the high end, when it cannot.
Why the gas price is the real risk
This is the United States benchmark price, not the European price that drove the Yara decision in the text above. No confirmed European figure was available for this article.
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| January, 2021 | 2.71 |
| February, 2021 | 5.35 |
| January, 2022 | 4.38 |
| August, 2022 | 8.81 |
Gas prices do not stay still, and the wind route price does not move with them. The United States benchmark price, called Henry Hub, sat at 2.71 dollars per million British thermal units in January 2021, jumped to 5.35 in February 2021 during a Texas cold snap, and reached 8.81 in August 2022, more than 3 times its January 2021 level. Fertilizer prices followed the same climb. They rose 80% during 2021, and in March 2022 the fertilizer company Yara cut its European ammonia and urea production by 55%, citing the rise in gas prices it was paying.
Who eats food grown with this fertilizer
The first row counts everyone who depends on nitrogen fertilizer. The other 2 rows are smaller groups counted within that same total, not additional people on top of it.
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| Rely on nitrogen fertilizer for food | 3.9 |
| Depend on imported fertilizer or fertilizer made from imported gas | 1.8 |
| Depend on imported fertilizer | 1.2 |
The stakes reach far beyond any one company. Roughly 3.9 billion people rely on nitrogen fertilizer to grow the food they eat, according to a 2025 study in Nature Food. Of those, 1.2 billion depend on fertilizer their country imports rather than makes at home. That number rises to 1.8 billion once it includes people who eat food grown with fertilizer made at home from imported natural gas, so a gas price spike anywhere still reaches their dinner table. When fertilizer costs more, farmers apply less of it, which lowers how much food a field produces, according to both a 2022 review in the journal Foods and the Nature Food study, though neither gives a figure for how much.