The regulatory environment
Ammonia is one of the six sectors covered by the EU’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM). From 2026, EU importers must purchase CBAM certificates based on the embedded carbon in ammonia imports.
The cost difference between a facility relying on default emissions values and one supplying independently verified lower-carbon data is already material, and will widen.
RFNBO standards add another dimension for producers targeting the European market. Hydrogen-derived fuels, including ammonia, must meet strict additionality and temporal matching criteria to qualify as renewable fuels of non-biological origin, unlocking a separate tier of buyer demand and price premium.
The data gap is the real barrier
Almost all of this discussion sorts plants into buckets by technology. The market talks in colours: green for renewable electrolysis, blue for fossil production with carbon capture, grey for everything unabated.
Every one of these labels describes how the ammonia is made. What is missing is not the technology – it is the commercial visibility to prove performance and capture value for it.
Buyers have realised that a ‘green’ label is not a guarantee of performance. The spread in carbon intensity from 0.25 to 5.5 kgCO₂e/kg is the difference between a genuinely low-carbon product and one that barely improves on conventional ammonia in some cases.
Without standardised, facility-level carbon intensity data, procurement decisions rely on claims rather than evidence, and the green premiums producers need to make their economics work are hard to justify.
For producers targeting Japan’s domestic credit scheme – which has financed lower-carbon ammonia projects including the ADNOC-Mitsui collaboration – the credibility of carbon intensity data is the gating factor. Only facilities that can demonstrate verified performance against the scheme’s thresholds access the premium.
A new demand channel: EACs
Compliance is not the only route to capturing value. Environmental Attribute Certificates (EACs) – which separate the lower-carbon attribute from the physical commodity – are opening a new channel that matters particularly for ammonia, given its complex global supply chains.
A producer in the Middle East or Australia can monetise their lower-carbon advantage to a food company in Europe or North America without needing to restructure the physical supply chain.
In May 2026, PepsiCo signed its first low-carbon ammonia EAC agreement with TalusAg, covering 30 000 t with an option for a further 41 000 – the first major food company to execute this kind of deal. Food and agriculture companies face growing Scope 3 pressure from investors and regulators, and fertilizer is a material part of their value chain emissions. EACs offer a direct route to act on that.
In June 2026, SBTi’s Corporate Net-Zero Standard V2 gave commodity certificates a defined role in corporate net-zero strategies, with book-and-claim purchases reported separately from the physical inventory. A certificate that cannot demonstrate additionality and independent verification is increasingly harder to sell.
The case for moving now
There’s a twentyfold spread in ammonia carbon intensity, but lower-carbon producers are not reliably capturing value for their performance. The mechanisms to change that are live – but all require the same foundation: credible, facility-level carbon intensity data.
A producer who begins building the data and business case now is positioned to have solutions in place before the cost curve steepens. One who waits until the allowance cost is visibly painful is already behind.
The data to understand where you stand, across 700+ ammonia facilities globally, is available now – free to access on the Sylvera platform here.
Shona Crawford-Smith is General Manager, Carbon-Differentiated Commodities, at Sylvera, which provides facility-level carbon intensity assessments, data, and mechanism eligibility analysis across the global ammonia and fertiliser market. Find out more here.
