Partner Profile: TalusAg
An Interview with Hiro Iwanaga, Co-Founder & CEO
Interview by Sophie LeClaire, conducted October 8, 2025.
Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the interviewee and do not reflect the views of NICCEE or its funding partners.
TalusAg is an agriculture technology and energy infrastructure company that develops modular, green ammonia systems. Ammonia (NH3) is the second most produced chemical in the world, and with 80% going to fertilizer use, it is essential for global food security. TalusAg produces green ammonia at or near sites with access to hydro, solar, or wind power, operating with zero carbon emissions and avoiding supply chain unreliability. TalusAg’s modular systems could increase accessibility and resiliency for local agriculture communities and mining sites, aiding both the environment and the local economy.
To learn more about the company, we met with the CEO and co-founder of TalusAg, Hiro Iwanaga, to ask him some questions and have a conversation about the future of green ammonia production.
What is the main purpose/mission of your startup?
The original purpose of the startup was philanthropic, to improve access to basic fertilizers, particularly in the developing world. This was fueled by the problem that ammonia is carbon-intensive, and it is produced in centralized plants and shipped globally. A farmer in Africa can pay significantly more than what a farmer in the US might pay for the same fertilizer. Our mission is to enable local, decentralized production of this critical raw material to lower costs, improve supply chain reliability, and make it more sustainable.
How does your work affect people and the environment?
A basic fertilizer can double crop yields overnight. Our mission is to improve global food security by improving access and lowering the cost of a basic, critical raw material. Having access to basic fertilizers for a farmer in the developing world can make the difference between a family making it to the next harvest or not. Having guaranteed long-term access to low-cost fertilizers for a large commercial farm in Africa or supported by tax credits in the US can allow farms to make longer-term investments in their farming operations, employ more people, and directly support the local farm economy. On the environment, ammonia production is 1.5% of global carbon emissions, and our systems are carbon-free. Our goal in the next few years is to deploy enough modular systems so that we are producing a couple million tons of green ammonia per year.
What method of green ammonia production are you using, and how is it competitive with other industry technologies?
We believe we have some of the most cost-competitive green ammonia in the world, primarily because 80% of the cost of green ammonia is attributed to power. Our modular systems enable us to site our systems near the point of demand, thereby displacing costly and unreliable delivery supply chains, and in proximity to low-cost power sources. Some of our best sites are in Ethiopia, where we have cheap hydropower and expensive imports for fertilizer. In South Dakota, we have reasonably priced power, relatively expensive fertilizer, and support through the clean hydrogen tax credit. We can lower the cost of fertilizer for South Dakota farmers by 40% or more.
How are you ensuring your process uses renewable energy?
Internationally, we are co-located or directly tied to renewable power such as solar, hydro, or wind. In the United States, to meet 45V requirements, we are near a mix of energy sources. We are likely to deploy a larger site in the northern corn belt, co-located with a curtailed wind farm.
Do you have partnerships that help drive your research? (i.e, government, private stakeholders, farmers) And how do they impact the research?
Our commercial deployments focus on our long-term offtake partners, which include the big agricultural and mining companies globally. We’re also working with PepsiCo on environmental attribute certificates and are excited about their support for our global energy attribute certificates. The additional research we’re focused on is the derivatives of ammonia fertilizer: for example, aqua ammonia, ammonium phosphate liquid, and ammonium sulfate liquid. In those cases, we are partnered with OCP and the Gates Foundation. We have government, private, and philanthropic partners that are each critical to commercializing our system and enabling us to serve small holders.
What do the real-world applications and operations look like?
We are continuing to grow. We have our deployed systems in Kenya and Iowa, and have just commissioned a system in Spain, partnered with MAXAM, to serve heavy metal mining companies.
What do you see as the biggest risk to your success, and how are you mitigating it?
Our biggest risk is our ability to financially and operationally scale our production. There is no risk in how the system works, but there is risk in how long it takes us to commission the system, and the operational execution of our scaling. We have a strong manufacturing partner, and we are solving our manufacturing problems in ways that other groups are not. However, our engineering has to mature from a team that has deployed a few pilot plants to one that’s deployed hundreds of these plants reliably and efficiently. To mitigate our risk, we are starting to hire strong talent from some of the larger companies to help us professionalize and mature our organization.
What incentives and/or subsidies are you currently leveraging? If you could change or suggest one regulation or policy today to help your mission, what would it be and why?
45V is a critical one. Because our systems can deploy rapidly (unlike some of the big plants) the extension of 45V through the end of 2027 is sufficient enough for us to deploy dozens of units in the United States Corn Belt to lower the cost of fertilizer for American farmers, and that’s our focus right now.
How do you see demand for green ammonia changing/developing in the future?
I’m not very worried about demand changing because ammonia is already the second most produced chemical in the world. Fertilizer and mining are big markets already, so we’re happy with that level of demand. If other sources of demand were to materialize in time, we will hopefully be positioned to serve that, but it’s not critical.
What would you want the average person to know about Talus?
We enable local production of a critical raw material sustainably, and we lower the cost of fertilizer for farmers. That’s it: that’s our story, and that’s our focus.