That is incorrect. World ammonia production in 2016 was 175 million tonnes. Producing that much ammonia -- the basis for all synthetic nitrogen fertilizers -- r

That is incorrect. World ammonia production in 2016 was 175 million tonnes. Producing that much ammonia -- the basis for all synthetic nitrogen fertilizers -- requires about 31 million tonnes of hydrogen. At present this hydrogen is indeed mostly made from natural gas. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ammonia_production https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ammonia_production As of 2011, it required 50 kilowatt hours to produce a kilogram of hydrogen by electrolysis of water, or 50 megawatt hours per tonne: https://www.energy.gov/eere/fuelcells/doe-technical-targets-hydrogen-production-electrolysis https://www.energy.gov/eere/fuelcells/doe-technical-targets-... That comes out to a total of 1550,000,000 megawatt hours, e.g. 1550 terawatt hours, to make 31 million tonnes of hydrogen. World electricity consumption in 2016 was 20,863 terawatt hours: https://www.iea.org/statistics/electricity/ https://www.iea.org/statistics/electricity/ Producing the world's synthetic fertilizer starting from electricity instead of natural gas would require about a 7.4% increase in world electricity production: (20863+1550) / 20863 = 1.074. It is true that this would benefit the climate only if the extra electricity generation were based on low-emissions sources like hydroelectricity, wind, nuclear, or solar. On the larger point, I think that corn-to-biofuel is a very poor use of money, land, and indirect fossil fuel inputs.