As new research from the department explores how green ammonia could reshape fertiliser production, we share an outside take on why it matters now – and what’s at stake for energy security, agriculture and Net Zero.
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Gas prices spike. Trade tensions grow. Market volatility rises – and a tariff is slapped on potash. Suddenly, something as basic as fertiliser becomes a global flashpoint, showing just how tightly food, fuel and foreign policy are now bound together.

“Ammonia [a key ingredient in nitrogen-fertilisers] has been a geopolitical issue for a few years now due to the situation in Ukraine, which is a major exporter of ammonia,” explains Dr Collin Smith of the Catalysis and Process Integration research group within the department.
“If you look at ammonia prices, the spike in the first year of the war was more than 100%, which caused major global food security concerns.”

Yet in the UK, the last fossil-fuel-powered ammonia plant was shut down a couple of years ago. Agricultural security was raised as a concern, but as the company noted at the time, the plant simply wasn’t economical anymore – leaving Britain fully dependent on imports of 'brown' or 'grey' ammonia (produced from natural gas) and its derivatives, such as urea and ammonium nitrate.

Today, all nitrogen-fertiliser compounds still start from grey ammonia. Green ammonia is effectively a carbon-free alternative, but except for a few pilot projects it isn’t yet used in large-scale fertiliser manufacture. Potash, which is the country’s primary source of potassium fertiliser, comes from a completely separate process.

Dr Smith and Professor Laura Torrente-Murciano are leading the charge in finding sustainable solutions with their research into green ammonia production. Harnessing solar and wind power, they’ve introduced an elegant tool that doesn’t just tally up renewable energy prices, but measures how well you can keep a chemical plant humming on variable power.

By analysing over 4,500 potential sites across Europe, they’ve demonstrated that smartly blending multiple renewable sources and designing for operational flexibility can dramatically cut energy losses – and bring green ammonia’s price tag within striking distance of its grey counterpart. In the UK, where abundant offshore wind and summer sunshine are waiting to be tapped, their findings show green ammonia isn’t just a distant dream but could be a commercially viable reality on the near horizon.

“Currently produced ammonia is the precursor for all nitrogen-fertiliser compounds. Green ammonia is not currently used in fertiliser (aside from exceptional cases),” Dr Smith points out. “But by making production more flexible, we could soon deliver both carbon reduction and energy security.”

At a time when governments are under pressure to strengthen energy security and deliver on Net Zero, this kind of work could lead to vital solutions.

Their work has just appeared in Nature Chemical Engineering. Beyond fertilisers, the team is already exploring how green ammonia might decarbonise hard-to-abate sectors such as steel, glass and cement – a topic they cover in detail in recent paper, The potential of green ammonia in the de-fossilization of industrial sectors.