Emissions Unleashed The Climate Crisis and America’s Petrochemical Boom

Whatever the form of burning, the carbon Several sources of emissions from the downstream that forms the spine of the plastic polymers is use and disposal of plastics are not consid- oxidized, and carbon dioxide is released. [...] However, production of urea, the most common fertilizer, the scale of the proposed expansion in ammonia is re-released back into the atmosphere.67 capacity is roughly four times the existing US capacity and is premised in large part on the There are multiple ways to estimate the emissions (speculative) use of ammonia as a fuel. [...] we have chosen not to estimate the use emissions Emissions depend on the amount, the crops being from ammonia and only calculated emissions for grown, the nature of the soil, and the climatic the production of urea, urea ammonium nitrate, conditions. [...] Given that the facility did not to take into account the emissions from the capture any of the CO2 released from the produc- energy-intensive capture system itself, nor the tion of power to run the hydrogen production upstream emissions that fuel the process. [...] be substantially offset by the carbon emissions from the power used to fuel the operation.83 In the case of ammonia production, it is also likely that any carbon capture system would only cover The emissions from the CCS process, for example, the hydrogen production phase, not the energy-in- from powering the capture system, significantly tensive Haber-Bosch process used to synthesize reduce the a.