Input Stories

There’s a hot commodity under your kitchen sink: ammonia (The Wall Street Journal, subscription).

What’s going on: The mixture of hydrogen and nitrogen, commonly used as a household cleaner, “is attracting billions of dollars for its use in fertilizer and low-carbon energy.”

• The Department of Energy on Monday announced a loan commitment of up to $1.56 billion for a low-emissions ammonia production facility in Indiana. The news follows a “large effort in Mississippi from ammonia giant CF Industries” and an investment by Abu Dhabi’s national oil company in an ammonia undertaking by Exxon Mobil.
• Endeavors such as the one in Indiana trap and bury carbon emissions, which make the projects low carbon.

Why it’s happening: “Ammonia doesn’t produce carbon emissions when burned as fuel, driving a new wave of activity from companies angling to ship it all over the world.”

• Increasing the domestic manufacture of ammonia has become more critical since the start of Russia’s war in Ukraine in 2022 because Russia is among the world’s leading ammonia producers.

The projects: In Indiana, Wabash Valley Resources—a low-carbon ammonia maker with which the DOE recently made a loan agreement—expects to produce 500,000 metric tons of ammonia annually. The company “use[s] a proven process to trap a nearly pure stream of [carbon dioxide].”

• In Mississippi and Louisiana, Exxon is working on carbon-capture projects with CF Industries, and in Texas, Australia-based Woodside Energy recently bought a Texas plant that it plans to use to produce low-carbon ammonia.