Item — HN Reader

> The difference between China and India,Indonesia,Australia,Vietnam,Brazil,South Africa is the scale of Coal-to-Liquids expansion

China began their buildout in 2008-09 following the oil shock due to the Iraq Civil War. India, Indonesia, Vietnam, and others are now starting the same kind of buildout at a similar scale over the next decade.

> Ammonia based fertilizers don't have carbon dependency, they have hydrogen dependency. Steel can be manufactured from iron oxide by reducing with carbon or hydrogen

Grey Ammonia remains 2x as expensive as Green Ammonia. This is changing (eg. as I mentioned elsewhere, India the price difference is only 10% now), but at global scale green hydrogen buildouts that will make it significantly cost competitive won't be finished until 2035 to 2040 depending on the country.

The IP for Green Steel (ie. Low carbon steel) as scale is tightly held by 3-4 Western European steelmakers, and India and the ASEAN countries I listed are all dramatically expand their steel production capacity.

And those European steelmakers and their customers like Volkswagen, Saab, and Volvo are uninterested in transferring their IP as it would destroy their CBAM advantage within the European market and Asia is not interested in using European steel as it would make infrastructure buildouts unneccesarily expensive.

This is why China [0][1], India [1], Saudi Arabia [1], and ASEAN states like Vietnam [2] are all treating CBAM as a discriminatory tariff and pushing back.

> Regarding "fatalistic or doomerism", in Europe we hear from many politicians, that we need to invest more in renewables and phase out coal, oil and gas. When asked for reason why we need to do this investment, the usual answer is "to save the climate". So on hand we have Europe decreasing it's CO2 emissions and mostly Asia increasing it's CO2 emissions, so that Europe's decreases are canceled out.

Yep. And frankly, the EU-27 is not in a position to pressure Asia. Much of the steel, grey ammonia, and other industrial products being manufactured with heavy carbon intensity is not intended for export to the EU-27 or the products manufactured using them are easily financed by the EU's carbon credit scheme or domestic export tax credits made to alleviate the CBAM tariff.

We modeled this standoff back in the late 2000s and early 2010s and it's happening exactly to the dot.

[0] - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-01-01/china-cal...

[1] - https://www.ft.com/content/5675563c-b1d5-47b5-858b-69653248e...

[2] - https://eastasiaforum.org/2026/03/06/vietnams-carbon-market-...

1 comments

I found only that in 2026 grey ammonia costs about 250–400 USD/tonne (key cost drivers: Natural gas price), green ammonia (India solar) 600–900 USD/tonne (key cost drivers: electrolyser CAPEX, renewable electricity).

https://ammoniagas.com/green-ammonia-vs-blue-amonia-key-diff...

The future price of green hydrogen is uncertain because of electrolyser CAPEX:

"Electrolyser system costs — the central input that 2020-era forecasts assumed would fall steadily — instead rose by a median of 57% since 2022, according to BloombergNEF's electrolyser price survey. "

https://www.greenfueljournal.com/post/green-hydrogen-cost-ec...

Coupling PV to electrolyzers and efficient hydrogen production using solar energy is still open research problem. Batteries will be probably needed.

"The low efficiency of PV-electrolyzer systems can be attributed to several factors: intrinsic losses in both the PV and electrolyzer units, energy consumption by balance-of-system components (e.g., inverters, thermal management), and, most critically, ineffective electrical coupling. Although some researchers advocate for direct coupling as a cost-effective solution, variable solar input remains a major challenge. Fluctuations in solar irradiance can cause the power delivered to fall outside the acceptable operating range of electrolyzers, leading to frequent shut-downs and start-ups. These cycling events can accelerate degradation, particularly in PEM electrolyzers, and also affect the purity and yield of hydrogen"

"Recent studies also highlight the integration of battery energy storage systems (BESS) into large-scale PV-CSP hybrid plants as a strategic enhancement. With anticipated declines in battery costs, this integrated approach may become increasingly viable in the near future."

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s44373-025-00080-4

> Yep. And frankly, the EU-27 is not in a position to pressure Asia. Much of the steel, grey ammonia, and other industrial products being manufactured with heavy carbon intensity is not intended for export to the EU-27 or is easily financed by the EU's carbon credit scheme.

If Asia and US are not willing to decrease their CO2 emissions, Europe should also decrease it's efforts in CO2 emission reductions, because this efforts are quite expensive. Personally, I'm in favor of world wide CO2 emission tax, simply because a tonne of CO2 emitted in Europe has the same climate effect as a tonne of CO2 emitted in Asia.

> If Asia and US are not willing to decrease their CO2 emissions, Europe should also decrease it's efforts in CO2 emission reductions...

Already happening [0].

India (Tata, AccelorMittal, JSW Group) also lobbied for this with Netherlands (Tata), Luxembourg (AccelorMittal), France (AccelorMittal), Italy (JSW Steel Piombino), and Czechia (TŽ) as their steel manufacturers don't have access to green steel IP and German and Swedish manufacturers are uninterested in losing their competitive advantage - especially after the JSW Group (India) and ThyssenKrupp Steel deal collapsed because Germany wouldn't allow layoffs [3].

> I'm in favor of world wide CO2 emission tax

But Asia, the Middle East, LatAm, and Africa isn't because they want to industrialize as much as they can over the next 10-15 years.

> Coupling PV to electrolyzers and efficient hydrogen production using solar energy is still open research problem

India has already started doing this (hence the Solar PV overproduction [1] and preferential financing for electrolyzers [2]) but most electrolyzer manufacturing projects won't be completed until 2030.

And other countries will then inevitably put tariffs on India for this expansion, just like how India has tariffed Chinese expansion and China has tariffed Indian expansion.

Like I mentioned, every country knows that there is a 10-15 year window left to expand where possible, and every national and subnational climate plan or infra project now assumes 2C-2.4C by 2050 as a given.

> I found only that in 2026 grey ammonia costs about 250–400 USD/tonne (key cost drivers: Natural gas price), green ammonia (India solar) 600–900 USD/tonne (key cost drivers: electrolyser CAPEX, renewable electricity).

Here's a good overview of India's current grey and green ammonia market by India's primary GreenTech and CleanTech advisory firm [4].

[0] - https://www.ft.com/content/c3c33e7b-8faf-4f06-b281-112117aee...

[1] - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-02-17/india-s-s...

[2] - https://www.spglobal.com/energy/en/news-research/latest-news...

[3] - https://www.reuters.com/business/thyssenkrupp-jindal-agree-p...

[4] - https://jmkresearch.com/green-ammonia-is-only-10-costlier-th...