Nitrogen fertilizer is essential for global food security, yet its production is a hyper-centralized, fossil-fuel-intensive process that accounts for 5 to 7% of global greenhouse gas emissions. As geopolitical instability threatens traditional supply chains, the vulnerability of this industry has never been clearer. Nico Pinkowski, CEO and co-founder of Nitricity, initially set out to decentralize fertilizer production with compact devices that farmers could use right on their fields. But market realities demanded a pivot. Today, Nitricity is producing liquid organic fertilizer from recycled almond shells at a centralized facility in California. In this episode, host Lara Pierpoint talks with Nico about the &quot;brutal reality&quot; of scaling a new solution for a mature industry, the intricacies of financing a first-of-a-kind commercial plant, and why their mission to decarbonize a critical global commodity is more urgent than ever. Credits: Hosted by Lara Pierpoint. Produced and edited by Ross Kenyon, Anne Bailey, and Stephen Lacey. Sean Marquand is our technical director. Stephen Lacey is our executive editor. The Green Blueprint is a co-production of Latitude Media and Trellis Climate. Subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or anywhere you get podcasts. For more reporting on the companies featured in this show, subscribe to Latitude Media’s newsletter.

The ‘brutal reality’ of scaling low-carbon fertilizer

The Green Blueprint

[SPEAKER_A] Latitude Media, covering the new frontiers of the energy transition.

[SPEAKER_B] The Persian Gulf, through the Strait of Hormuz, supplies 38% of global urea, which is the most common form of nitrogen fertilizer used in the world. Because of the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, it is estimated that over the next year, an additional 45 million more people around the world are going to go into food insecurity.

[SPEAKER_A] The global fertilizer industry is a massive, hyper-centralized machine that requires a lot of natural gas and coal for production. Making and applying fertilizer accounts for a staggering 5 to 7% of global greenhouse gas emissions. And as we just learned from the Iran War, given how reliant fertilizer production is on fossil fuels, it is highly vulnerable to supply shocks.

[SPEAKER_B] It came down to farmers just wanting fertilizer. Farmers said, "Hey, that's nice, but I just need a tank of fertilizer. And by the way, I need like 10,000 times more than you're able to make right now.

[SPEAKER_A] Nico Pinkowski and his team at Nitricity thought they had the perfect solution: a device that would let farmers produce their own fertilizer right on their fields using solar power and irrigation pumps. But when they actually took their prototype to farmers in California's Central Valley, they got a hard lesson about product-market fit.

[SPEAKER_B] We thought we had the one technology to rule them all, and we very quickly realized that wasn't gonna be successful.

[SPEAKER_A] I'm Lara Pierpoint, and this is The Green Blueprint, a show about the architects of the clean energy economy. We've already invented most of the solutions needed to decarbonize the global economy, but many of these technologies are not yet commercial, and they need to get financed and built at...

The ‘brutal reality’ of scaling low-carbon fertilizer

Read the full transcript

The candid version is on a podcast,
not the earnings call.

The ‘brutal reality’ of scaling low-carbon fertilizer

Read the full transcript

The candid version is on a podcast, not the earnings call.

The candid version is on a podcast,
not the earnings call.