Page 168 - CW E-Magazine (27-5-2025)

Special Report

Green power procurement in the agrochemical sector

in India

he Indian agrochemical sector protection (pesticides) chemicals. JMK RESEARCH & ANALYTICS
broadly comprises crop growth Agrochemicals manufacturing, having Email: contact@jmkresearch.com
T(fertilizers, plant growth regu- a signifi cant reliance on fossil fuels
lators, biostimulants, etc.) and crop for both raw materials and energy sources, is a hard-to-abate industrial
sector.

In India, over 90% of emissions
from the agrochemical industry origi-
nate from fertilizer production, with
urea being the most signifi cant com-
ponent. In contrast, pesticides are more
energy and emission-intensive than
fertilizers on a per-weight basis.
However, due to their lower annual
production and consumption levels,
their overall contribution to the energy
use and emissions in the agrochemical
sector is much smaller.

Ways to decarbonise
Natural gas is the main input used in
most agrochemical production processes.
Fig. 1: Urea manufacturing process overview As a result, many decarbonization ef-
Source: JMK Research forts in the agrochemical industry fo-
cus on reducing the emissions associ-
ated with natural gas, which is a fossil
fuel. These measures aim to lessen
the environmental impact by utilizing
greener alternatives such as biogas or
biomethane, implementing carbon cap-
ture technologies, or adopting chemical
processes that do not depend on natural
gas. For example, hydrogen can be pro-
duced through electrolysis instead of
steam methane reforming (SMR).

Among all decarbonization mea-
sures, green hydrogen (H ) has the
2
greatest potential for reducing emis-
sions as it completely replaces the
current, emission-intensive method
of producing hydrogen through SMR,
which relies heavily on natural gas.
This process is critical for creating
ammonia and various agrochemical
Fig. 2: Agrochemical decarbonisation measures products. However, the green H market
2
Source: JMK Research is still in its early development stages and
168 Chemical Weekly May 27, 2025

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