Green bread, no ham

The phrase “green bread” hardly conjures up an appealing image, at least for the more literally minded. But green bread is now apparently a thing in a non-literal sense, at least for fertiliser major Yara, whose CEO has called for more subsidies from the EU for the production of green ammonia. Because of course wheat production is also a source of emissions and this needs to change. Just when you thought you’ve heard it all.

“Europe needs to move faster in putting low carbon bread on the table, if it wants to meet its emission targets, according to one of the world’s largest crop nutrient producers,” the Financial Times informed us grimly earlier today, citing Yara’s Svein Tore Holsether.

According to Holsether, green hydrogen holds a lot of promise but it can’t take off without generous government support because — you’d never guess — it is currently too expensive to make commercial sense. This doesn’t look like it’s about to change, so the only way to make that promise happen is through heavy subsidising — a stunning revelation, no doubt.

Emissions from the use of hydrocarbon made fertilisers account for about half of all emissions related to the production of a loaf of bread and I’m sure we are all grateful for that piece of priceless information but not half as grateful as we should be upon learning that this could be fixed “easily”, per Holsether. Governments just need to “take this seriously”, meaning pour a few billions into it. Which the EU is already doing, by the way. Shockingly, it’s not enough.