The Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) has issued detailed decarbonization pathways for the global chemicals industry, spelling out how producers of ammonia, methanol, high-value chemicals and fertilizer-linked nitrous oxide must cut emissions to stay aligned with international climate goals.
Released on December 2, 2025, the guidance answers who needs to act, what must change, when reductions must occur, where the sector’s pressure points lie, and how companies should reorganize their operations to meet near-term and long-term climate thresholds. Though global in scope, the framework holds particular relevance for Africa, where agriculture, industrialization plans and energy systems are tightly bound to chemical production and fertilizer use.
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The chemicals sector underpins nearly all modern manufacturing, and its footprint is vast: it is the world’s largest industrial energy consumer and the third-largest industrial emitter. The SBTi’s new pathways break this complexity into identifiable pieces. Each production route, from ammonia synthesis to methanol reforming and nitric acid production, receives a specific emissions trajectory grounded in climate science.
Companies are given a clear line of sight on what “Paris-aligned” looks like for their assets, processes and downstream impacts. For Africa, this matters because fertilizer production and use sit sharply at the intersection of food security and emissions. The continent imports most of the nitrogen fertilizers it applies on its farms, with regional consumption running into several million tones annually, and the volatility of global markets regularly spills over into food prices.
That tension is visible in national figures. Ethiopia’s fertilizer consumption has expanded to about 1.7 million tones a year, largely driven by urea. Nigeria’s Dangote complex, with a capacity of three million tones annually, now anchors West Africa’s ammonia and urea supply and has altered import patterns across the region.
Each facility represents both an economic opportunity and a carbon obligation. An ammonia plant producing one million tones per year emits millions of tones of CO₂ over a decade if built on unabated natural-gas feedstock; the same plant powered by low-carbon hydrogen via electrolysis pulls those emissions down dramatically but demands hundreds of megawatts of dedicated renewable power and substantial capital. The SBTi pathways quantify the magnitude of these trade-offs and set expectations that financiers will increasingly use when assessing project viability.
African states pursuing green hydrogen and green ammonia face a difficult balance between ambition, capital needs and market uncertainty. Over the past year, several large export-oriented hydrogen projects globally have struggled to secure bankable offtake, and one high-profile developer withdrew from a major African project after expected deals failed to materialize, a reminder that commercial appetite is still in flux. These setbacks arrive just as countries such as Namibia, Egypt, Morocco and South Africa promote large-scale green industrial hubs expected to anchor future fertilizer supply and export revenue.
The SBTi’s structure, which breaks decarbonization into realistic, measurable stages, offers governments and developers a clearer way to design projects that avoid overextension and match technology choices to credible demand.
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Smaller, distributed models of green ammonia production have begun to attract interest because they can serve local farming belts without the burdens of mega-scale infrastructure. Modular plants designed to produce a few thousand tones per year can be paired with local solar, wind or geothermal resources, cut transport costs, and soften the currency exposure faced by fertilizer importers.
For East African highlands and parts of the Sahel, where transport adds a sizable premium to farm-gate fertilizer prices, distributed production could ease immediate pressure while still aligning with the SBTi’s emissions expectations. These projects require tens rather than billions of dollars, making them easier to finance through blended structures that combine development finance with private capital.
The report also reaches beyond factories to the fields where nitrous oxide emissions rise after fertilizer application. SBTi acknowledges that production-side reforms alone cannot contain agricultural N₂O, a gas far more potent than CO₂.
For African agriculture, where application rates, soil conditions and agronomic practices vary sharply, the implication is that decarbonization demands improved extension services, better nutrient-use efficiency, locally tailored blends and stronger distribution networks. These are development challenges as much as climate tasks, and the SBTi framework provides a basis for donors and governments to align agricultural support with emissions goals.
As African governments shape industrial policy, the SBTi pathways give regulators a credible reference point for approving new plants, structuring incentives and negotiating financing. Whether a state chooses to retrofit gas-based facilities with carbon capture, pursue renewable-powered electrolysis, or blend both approaches, the framework makes the climate implications quantifiable.
Investors and export-credit agencies will lean heavily on these metrics when deciding where to allocate capital. In practice, projects that cannot demonstrate alignment with the SBTi trajectories will face higher financing costs or outright exclusion from climate-aligned capital pools.
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The effect of the new guidance is to shift Africa’s fertilizer and chemical build-out from a race for capacity to a test of credibility. The continent’s industrial expansion can proceed on cleaner terms if governments, companies and financiers absorb and apply the pathways now, rather than retrofit later at higher cost.
The SBTi has not settled the continent’s industrial choices, but it has made the stakes unmistakable: every ammonia unit built, every hydrogen plan financed, and every tone of fertilizer applied will carry an emissions trajectory that can now be measured, judged and compared.
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