Producing nitrogen fertilizers with only air, water and renewable energy. That, in a nutshell, is what Nitricity, a Californian agri-tech startup that announced the closing of its US$20 million Series A investment capital raise. The round was led by Khosla Ventures and Fine Structure Ventures, with additional participation from Energy Impact Partners, Lowercarbon Capital and MCJ Collective.
The firm electrifies and distributes nitrogen fertilizer production and its approach is based on a new technology of local nutrient production using low-cost solar or wind energy. This system is a major departure from the current nitrogen supply chain, which uses fossil fuels and is highly centralized and expensive to transport.
«This fundraising round brings us one step closer toward sustainable and locally produced fertilizer», said Nicolas Pinkowski, CEO and co-founder of Nitricity. «It’s time to bring this to market. We have aggressive growth plans in motion».
With this financing, the company has raised US$27 million in total to date. This will accelerate its ability to bring climate-smart fertilizers to a market experiencing ongoing and historic fertilizer price volatility and supply challenges.
Electrified technology
«This electrified technology provides fertilizer in a climate-smart nitrate form, designed for efficient application, allowing it to address greenhouse gas emissions beyond ammonia-based technologies», said Joshua McEnaney, president, CTO and co-founder at Nitricity. «This is an opportunity to attack not just the 1-2% of global GHG emissions in the production, but the additional 5% of GHG emissions in the application by mitigating nitrous oxide formation. We are pushing hard to scale up and implement this solution».
Nitricity's technology has been proven in commercial-scale agricultural operations through multiple functional pilots, including subsurface fertigation of tomatoes in a collaboration with California State University Fresno’s Center for Irrigation Technology and the Water, Energy and Technology Center. Through solar fertilization technology, the company has demonstrated the power of its system to produce and apply nitrogen fertilizer closer to the end user, unlike current fertilization systems.
Transforming the industry
«Today’s fertilizer industry is facing the perfect storm of high GHG emissions, high fossil fuel consumption, rising costs and geopolitical disruptions,” said Rajesh Swaminathan, partner at Khosla Ventures.
«Nitricity’s decentralized approach to manufacturing fertilizers using just air, water and renewables-based electricity was born out of a vision to completely transform a 100-year-old industry, and we are excited to be partnering with them», he added.
«Nitricity has made rapid progress since our initial investment in their Seed round», said Allison Hinckley, senior associate at Fine Structure Ventures, a venture capital fund affiliated with FMR LLC, the parent company of Fidelity Investments. »In response, we are increasing our support of the company to aid in bringing their differentiated, decarbonized fertilizer products to market in the near term».
The company expects its renewable technology to be available in the market for the entire value chain within two years.
