This story is from Floodlight, a nonprofit newsroom that investigates the powers stalling local weather motion. Join Floodlight’s publication right here. 

From her dwelling in Donaldsonville, La., lower than three miles from the world’s largest ammonia plant, Ashley Gaignard says the air itself carries a chemical edge. 

The odor, she mentioned, is sharp and lingering. Years in the past, when her son attended an elementary faculty a few mile from the huge CF Industries ammonia manufacturing facility, he would start wheezing throughout recess, she recalled. His respiratory issues eased solely after he transferred to a faculty a number of miles farther away.

“I’m not towards progress,” Gaignard mentioned. “We’re towards improvement that toxins and displaces and disregards human life.”

Now, alongside Louisiana’s Mississippi River hall, fertilizer big CF Industries and different firms are putting multibillion-dollar bets on “blue ammonia” — a product produced from fossil fuels however with additional know-how to seize planet-warming gases and pipe them underground for storage. 

Up to now, no commercial-scale blue ammonia vegetation are working — however greater than 20 have been proposed nationwide, based on Oil and Fuel Watch. 4 of the most important such vegetation are slated for Louisiana, in communities already saturated with petrochemical air pollution. 

An in depth evaluate by Floodlight discovered no proof that present carbon seize initiatives wherever on this planet have achieved something near the emissions cuts firms like CF Industries are promising. Allow paperwork, in the meantime, present that the proposed vegetation mixed could possibly be allowed to discharge greater than 2,800 tons every year of air pollution (not greenhouse gases), together with greater than 400 tons of ammonia. 

Labeled as a extremely hazardous chemical, ammonia can harm the lungs and damage the pores and skin, eyes and throat. Within the air, it may type advantageous particles which can be linked to elevated dangers of coronary heart illness and stroke, and may be lethal — significantly for kids, older adults and other people with coronary heart or lung illness. 

The Louisiana vegetation would even be allowed to launch carcinogens, together with benzene and formaldehyde.

The businesses proposing these vegetation — CF Industries, Air Merchandise, Clear Hydrogen Works and St. Charles Clear Fuels — have mentioned their operations will present an plentiful supply of fresh fertilizer and clear power to world markets, together with international locations whose local weather and commerce insurance policies favor low-carbon fuels. They’ve additionally mentioned they’ll create almost 840 everlasting jobs and tens of millions in new tax income for native communities whereas prioritizing public well being and security.

“We’re designing the ability with superior emissions controls, strong monitoring techniques, and powerful operational practices to reduce impacts,” mentioned Chandra Stacie, the director of group relations for St. Charles Clear Fuels. “Our aim is to function responsibly and be a constructive, long-term accomplice.”

Environmental advocates, scientists and group members, nevertheless, say the brand new ammonia vegetation would delay the phase-out of fossil fuels — and produce substantial air air pollution and security dangers to locations which have lengthy borne the well being prices of America’s industrial financial system. 

Why Louisiana grew to become floor zero

Whereas the historic streets of Donaldsonville not too long ago served because the backdrop to the 2025 blockbuster Sinners, the city’s real-life drama is way much less cinematic.

Donaldsonville lies on the heart of Most cancers Alley, a chemical hall between Baton Rouge and New Orleans identified for its elevated well being dangers and dense focus of petrochemical vegetation and refineries.

Now this stretch of Louisiana can also be floor zero for a brand new buildout: 4 proposed blue ammonia vegetation, with a number of extra deliberate for Texas.

So, why the Gulf Coast?

South Louisiana has plentiful pure gasoline for ammonia manufacturing and ports that hook up with worldwide delivery routes.

The state affords an present pipeline community, a seasoned chemical-industry workforce and political leaders who’ve persistently favored industrial improvement. The businesses proposing ammonia vegetation can even faucet beneficiant state and federal incentives, together with greater than $2 billion in federal tax credit for carbon seize initiatives.

The Inflation Discount Act, former President Joe Biden’s signature local weather regulation, permits firms to gather as much as $85 for every ton of carbon captured and completely saved. 

And the state of Louisiana is providing builders tens of millions extra in grants and tax breaks designed to spur financial improvement. 

Mark Jacobson, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford College who has studied carbon seize techniques for years, mentioned there’s little to be gained — and far to lose — from making ammonia this fashion.

“These vegetation improve air air pollution, they improve world warming … they improve not solely power prices, however complete social prices, and so there’s zero profit — besides to the people who find themselves taking the subsidies to implement these initiatives,” he mentioned.

The dimensions of subsidies for the proposed Louisiana ammonia vegetation is “off-the-charts outrageous” — and quantities to a nasty deal for taxpayers, mentioned Greg LeRoy, govt director of Good Jobs First, a nonprofit that tracks and analyzes financial improvement initiatives. The vegetation are unlikely to ship something near $2 billion a yr in public advantages, he mentioned. 

“It may well solely be precisely known as a large switch of wealth from U.S. taxpayers to company shareholders,” he mentioned.

Formidable pitches, harder actuality

Ammonia has lengthy been a workhorse of the worldwide financial system, quietly underpinning trendy agriculture. It’s the important thing ingredient in nitrogen fertilizer, and demand is predicted to develop as world meals manufacturing strains to maintain tempo with inhabitants development. 

Now, producers say it may play a far bigger function — not simply as fertilizer, however as a climate-friendly gas for ships and energy vegetation. 

When it’s burned as a gas, ammonia doesn’t emit carbon dioxide (although it may produce nitrous oxide, a greenhouse gasoline roughly 270 instances stronger than carbon dioxide).

It can be burned with different fuels in energy vegetation or doubtlessly used to retailer hydrogen for delivery and later conversion to be used in gas cells. 

However the course of generally used to make ammonia carries a heavy local weather value.

Most manufacturing depends on hydrogen derived from pure gasoline, a course of that releases carbon dioxide. Monumental quantities of power — usually from fossil fuels — are then used to power hydrogen and nitrogen to mix below excessive warmth and strain.

Nitrogen fertilizer vegetation within the U.S. launched greater than 46 million tons of heat-trapping gases in 2021 — roughly the emissions of 9 million vehicles operating for a yr — based on a report by the Environmental Integrity Undertaking. Globally, nearly 2% of carbon dioxide emissions come from making ammonia — or as a lot because the power system emissions of South Africa, based on the Worldwide Vitality Company. 

That’s the place carbon seize is available in. The businesses planning blue ammonia vegetation say they may isolate many of the carbon dioxide launched, piping it deep underground for everlasting storage.

• Texas-based Clear Hydrogen Works says its Ascension Clear Vitality challenge, slated for Donaldsonville, will produce as much as 7.2 million tons of ammonia yearly and can seize “as much as 98 p.c” of the carbon dioxide produced.
• Close by, CF Industries and the Pennsylvania-based Air Merchandise plan to construct two vegetation they are saying can have seize charges of 95% or extra. 
• About an hour to the east, the St. Charles Clear Fuels challenge would seize greater than 99% of carbon dioxide generated, its developer says.

These claims are unlikely to carry up, mentioned Cornell College professor Robert Howarth, an professional on greenhouse gasoline emissions and ammonia air pollution. 

“Is the {industry} right in saying that they’ll produce a very, actually low emissions gas utilizing pure gasoline as their authentic feedstock?” he requested. “The reply is not any. It’s simply by no means been carried out, and I don’t assume it may be carried out.”

Nearly all of present carbon seize amenities lure lower than 60% of carbon dioxide, based on a 2023 evaluate by the Institute for Vitality Economics and Monetary Evaluation. “No present challenge has persistently captured greater than 80% of carbon,” the institute discovered.

Blue hydrogen — a prerequisite for blue ammonia — “is neither clear nor low-carbon,” and pursuing it could divert money and time from simpler local weather options, the institute concluded. 

In an electronic mail to Floodlight, Air Merchandise spokesperson Christina Stephens mentioned the corporate is “very assured in our proprietary know-how that enables us to seize 95 p.c of the CO2 emissions.” She didn’t elaborate.

Stacie, the St. Charles Clear Fuels consultant, mentioned its facility’s design will probably be “conducive to excessive seize charges.”

Consultants additionally be aware that carbon seize itself is usually powered by pure gasoline, including emissions and undercutting its local weather advantages.

Compounding the issue are emissions of methane, a much more potent greenhouse gasoline than carbon dioxide. Methane is often emitted throughout drilling, processing and transport of pure gasoline. Extra escapes within the course of used to extract hydrogen for ammonia manufacturing.

Complete methane emissions from the fertilizer {industry} could possibly be greater than 140 instances greater than official estimates, one 2019 research discovered.

Stephens, the Air Merchandise spokesperson, mentioned the corporate believes earlier analysis associated to methane leakage has flaws that led to inaccurate conclusions.

Stacie, in the meantime, mentioned St. Charles Clear Fuels will monitor and confirm methane emissions by means of “operations management and third-party verification according to rising finest practices.”

The native value of a worldwide gas

Even when blue ammonia vegetation ship the local weather advantages their backers promise — advantages that consultants dispute — their native impacts may nonetheless be substantial.

In 2024, the CF Industries Donaldsonville plant — close to Gaignard’s home — launched extra poisonous air pollution than all however one different industrial web site nationally, based on EPA information. The 7.1 million kilos of ammonia the plant launched that yr would greater than fill the New Orleans Superdome, based on Kimberly Terrell, a analysis scientist for the Environmental Integrity Undertaking.

Emissions from the deliberate blue ammonia vegetation may worsen respiratory well being, Terrell mentioned, with impacts extending far past the plant websites. 

“I might be involved about growing bronchial asthma charges long run,” she mentioned.

“We live in a cauldron of poisonous chemical compounds down right here in Louisiana.”
—Jane Patton, a marketing campaign supervisor for the Heart for Worldwide Environmental Regulation.

Ascension Parish, the place three of the proposed blue ammonia vegetation could be constructed, hosts greater than two dozen industrial amenities and already has the second highest quantity of air emissions within the nation, based on EPA information.

So the prospect of latest ammonia vegetation in Ascension Parish worries Twila Collins. 

She has lived her total 55-year life in Modeste, a historic, predominantly Black group alongside the Mississippi River. If CF Industries will get its manner, a large ammonia plant would rise roughly a mile from her dwelling. 

Her message for the corporate is blunt: “Depart us alone and discover someplace else to go the place there’s no one residing, so that you gained’t disrupt a group.”

Industrial air pollution already drifts into her neighborhood, bringing smells “like a landfill,” she mentioned, and a brand new ammonia plant would add one other layer of air pollution — and one other set of well being dangers.

In a 2024 report, CF Industries mentioned its workers “repeatedly preserve, exchange, and replace tools” to scale back emissions. 

However below its draft allow for the Blue Level plant, the corporate could be allowed to launch greater than 1,100 tons of air pollution every year — equal to the burden of greater than 27 absolutely loaded tractor trailers. That features greater than 140 tons of ammonia and greater than 580 tons of carbon monoxide.

Collins mentioned she will be able to identify greater than 30 folks in Modeste that suffer from most cancers or respiratory issues. The problem is deeply private. She herself has struggled with most cancers. And in 2002, her 9-year-old son died of an bronchial asthma assault. He had struggled with bronchial asthma all his life, however Collins nonetheless wonders whether or not the commercial air pollution surrounding Modeste helped set off the assault that killed him.

She additionally worries about what may go fallacious if one thing fails — an accident, a leak or worse — as a result of ammonia manufacturing and carbon dioxide transport contain well-documented industrial dangers.

CF Industries’ Donaldsonville plant has a historical past of lethal accidents: a 2000 explosion and fireplace killed three employees and injured at the least eight others, and a 2013 blast killed one employee and injured eight extra. 

This previous November, an explosion at one other CF Industries plant in Yazoo Metropolis, Miss., led to an ammonia leak and prompted the evacuation of close by residents.

Residents push again

Whereas supporters emphasize the financial enhance and high-paying jobs the initiatives may deliver, many native residents have turned out at public hearings to oppose them.

So many individuals packed a listening to room on the St. Charles challenge in 2024 that it needed to be canceled and rescheduled in a bigger venue.

A number of the public fears have centered on the carbon dioxide pipelines that might be wanted to make the initiatives work.

Air Merchandise, for example, has proposed piping tens of millions of tons of carbon dioxide 38 miles to be saved a mile beneath Lake Maurepas. The challenge could be “the world’s largest everlasting carbon dioxide sequestration endeavor thus far,” based on the Louisiana Division of Financial Improvement. 

At a November public listening to on the challenge, Air Merchandise vp Andrew Connolly mentioned the corporate has an “unsurpassed security report.” 

“All pipelines will probably be monitored 24-7 and we are going to meet or exceed all pipeline laws,” he mentioned. 

Greater than 300 folks turned out for that public listening to, based on Dustin Renaud, a spokesperson for the environmental regulation group Earthjustice. Among the many greater than 50 individuals who spoke, all however three opposed the challenge.

Opponents have warned of what may occur if a carbon dioxide pipeline ruptures, as occurred in 2020 in Satartia, Miss. That catastrophe despatched 45 folks to the hospital and left some residents unconscious of their houses and vehicles. Starved of oxygen, vehicles stalled or couldn’t begin, making evacuation troublesome.

The Air Merchandise pipeline would run inside half a mile of Sorrento Major College, an elementary faculty in Ascension Parish with greater than 600 college students. An professional employed by Earthjustice concluded {that a} pipeline rupture may endanger the schoolchildren, together with residents of a close-by subdivision.

Stephens, the Air Merchandise spokesperson, mentioned the corporate will run the pipeline deeper than is required by code within the faculty’s neighborhood. The pipeline can even have extra shutoff valves than required, she mentioned.

“We now have a protracted protected historical past of working the most important hydrogen pipeline community on this planet proper right here in Louisiana,” she wrote.

Stacie, the St. Charles Clear Fuels consultant, mentioned the corporate will incorporate “detection techniques, automated shutdowns, mechanical integrity packages and emergency response planning” — according to federal guidelines and “classes realized from prior incidents.”

Nonetheless, some residents fear. 

“We don’t have evacuation route,” mentioned St. James Parish resident Gail LeBoeuf, who co-founded the environmental justice group Inclusive Louisiana. “If one thing would occur, we’d simply be caught like Chuck.”

Guarantees of jobs, security and financial development

The businesses behind the blue ammonia initiatives have mentioned they may deliver jobs and tens of millions of {dollars} into the state financial system — a message that has discovered a receptive viewers within the state capital and a few metropolis halls.

CF Industries didn’t reply to Floodlight’s questions on its proposed plant, whereas Clear Hydrogen Works declined to reply questions.

Amid public opposition, Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry in October introduced a moratorium on new carbon seize initiatives. The order halted the state’s evaluate of latest permits for initiatives that might inject carbon dioxide underground, whereas permitting present functions to proceed — together with the blue ammonia initiatives already underway.

In touting the CF Industries proposal final April, Landry famous that the corporate has been working within the state for greater than 50 years. “We don’t get to develop meals on this nation with out the laborious work of CF Industries and its workers,” he mentioned.

The oil and gasoline {industry} — which has sturdy ties to the ammonia and fertilizer industries — has for years been Landry’s largest industrial sector donor. It has contributed greater than $1.1 million to his campaigns, based on information from FollowTheMoney.org.

Donaldsonville Mayor Leroy Sullivan has additionally spoken out in favor of the proposals by CF Industries and Clear Hydrogen Works. 

“The advantages outweigh the issues they’re saying,” he informed WBRZ final yr. 

“These vegetation are safer, they’re higher for the financial system than among the different industries that could be within the space.”

Sullivan beforehand labored at CF Industries for 26 years.  In 2000, he was badly injured in an explosion on the Donaldsonville plant and spent greater than a month recovering in a burn unit. 

“It nearly killed me,” he mentioned at a public listening to final yr on the Ascension Clear Vitality proposal.

Neither Sullivan nor Landry responded to Floodlight’s requests for interviews.

For her half, Gaignard feels let down.

“What hurts probably the most is we’re watching the leaders that we elected … help these firms as an alternative of supporting the group,” she mentioned. 

A lower-carbon different 

There are cleaner methods to make ammonia.

As an alternative of extracting hydrogen from pure gasoline after which making an attempt to seize the CO₂, producers can use renewable electrical energy to separate water into hydrogen and oxygen. That “inexperienced hydrogen” can then be mixed with nitrogen to make what’s often called “inexperienced ammonia.”

No less than one large-scale inexperienced ammonia plant is already working. In Chifeng, China, a facility powered by wind generators and photo voltaic panels started industrial-scale manufacturing in 2025. By 2028, the plant is predicted to provide 1.5 million tons of inexperienced ammonia yearly.

Within the U.S., builders have proposed inexperienced ammonia vegetation in Texas, Nebraska, Oklahoma and Washington. 

“As an alternative of creating this massive labyrinth of pipes and tools and sending CO2 all over the place and utilizing extra power, you may merely produce that hydrogen with electrical energy from photo voltaic and wind,” mentioned Jacobson, the Stanford professor. 

Within the debate over blue ammonia, the stakes are excessive.

For ammonia producers, the initiatives promise billions in federal tax credit and a foothold in rising power markets. Additionally they supply oil and gasoline firms a option to delay the phase-out of fossil fuels, critics say.

“It’s a good way to lock in oil and gasoline infrastructure. … One thing that we must be getting away from, versus locking in for years and years to come back,” mentioned Alexandra Shaykevich, a analysis supervisor on the Environmental Integrity Undertaking who tracks oil and gasoline initiatives. 

For residents alongside Louisiana’s Most cancers Alley, the stakes are extra instant. They’re being requested to stay with new vegetation, new pipelines and new dangers in locations which have already absorbed many years of air pollution. 

However Gaignard plans to maintain combating for her group.

“I don’t have a look at this as purple and blue and the left and the appropriate,” she mentioned. “We have to begin humanity.”

Floodlight is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates the powers stalling local weather motion.

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