The cost of green ammonia produced in China is coming down, driven by flagship projects such as Envision Energy’s 320,000 tonnes-per-year green hydrogen and ammonia facility near Chefing City, with the first exports now hitting the market.
The implications of this shifting dynamic were explored in a panel session at Wood Mackenzie’s Hydrogen Conference 2025 in London last week, with Frunk Yu, Senior Vice-President of Envision Energy, among the speakers.
Wood Mackenzie analyst Tiantian Zhao, a research analyst in hydrogen and derivatives, framed the shifting dynamic in ammonia at the top of the session. She noted how the global low-carbon ammonia cost curve was coming down, to the extent that green ammonia is getting towards parity with blue ammonia projects. In the years ahead, she noted, more capacity would be added and costs should fall even further.
That shift raises a question about whether ammonia molecules will be the primary export from China related to this activity, or whether electrolyser installations in overseas markets could be a primary play.
Yu of Envision started by noting how ammonia markets like Europe would need to import a lot of green ammonia in the years ahead to meet market demand.
“China, India, and Latin America will all become very important to supply competitive green ammonia to Europe,” he said.
Today, he said, the green ammonia landing from China in Europe comes at a lower overall cost than local production. There are other factors for industrial customers to consider besides cost, he noted, but cost still remains a key parameter.
Yu said he could not put a public price on the supplied ammonia, for reasons of competition, but agreed with Zhao’s assessment about the cost of China-supplied green ammonia being close to the cost of fossil-derived ammonia made in Europe.
“The spread between conventional and green is very low,” he said, adding that within five years it was reasonable to say that parity could be achieved.
Later on in the session, Yu also called into question some of the top-line savings being quoted by Indian projects that are getting underway, backed by government subsidies. The Indian government recently issued 13 tenders to companies offering green ammonia prices of below $600 per tonne.
The question of whether Chinese technologies to make green ammonia can be successfully exported around the world in time was also explored in the session. Here, Yu suggested that future standardised engineering could make it easier to build out projects in many territories using China-made components.
“If every project is more like just taking a product and assembling and using it, with a compliance check, then that changes things. That is our ambition for the future. If you remove all the engineering puzzles [it becomes more like buying a product],” said Yu.
