Nitricity

Without the agricultural gains of synthetic fertilizer, it is estimated the world population would only be half as large as it is today. Yet, our reliance on synthetic fertilizer using the 100-year old Haber-Bosch process has major downsides: the production, transportation, and over-application of fertilizer generate 7% of global GHG emissions, especially in runoff of N2O, which has 265x the warming potential of CO2. Nitricity sells ultra-low-cost, solar-powered plasma cells that produce fertilizer on-site and on-demand. Their technology fixes nitrogen from the air, then combines it with other nutrients to produce a range of products, such as nitric acid and calcium nitrate. This innovation integrates directly with a farm’s irrigation system, enabling a precise and measurable supply of fertilizer anywhere in the world. Nitricity upends the fertilizer industry’s massive, dirty, and expensive centralized model with distributed fertilizer production systems powered by solar energy. The result is greater granularity in the quantity, composition, and timing of fertilizer application. For farmers, this works out to higher yields and lower costs on a per-acre basis, all while reducing GHG emissions by an estimated 81%.