About half of the global food supply is grown using fertilizer, which means it is critical to sustaining life for billions of people. It is also critical to the sustainability of the world. 
Question: In what ways is CF part of the solution to emerging global resource constraints?
Will: CF’s fertilizers help farmers feed the world, which is no small task with the global population growing by 220,000 people every single day. About half of the global food supply is made possible by fertilizer, which means it is critical to sustaining billions of people. Fertilizer is also critical to the sustainability of the planet. Because fertilizers enable more food to be grown on less land, a significant portion of the world’s forests can be preserved. This is important for many reasons, including that forests absorb carbon dioxide. In fact, we estimate that without synthetic fertilizers we would need 30% more farmland to produce the same amount of food. That level of global deforestation would cause a net increase of nearly five gigatonnes of carbon dioxide emissions, which would increase global emissions by 10%.
Question: While your business certainly has a significant positive impact, nitrogen manufacturing is also very energy intensive. What is CF doing to mitigate that impact?
Will: The basic chemistry required to convert atmospheric nitrogen into ammonia — the building block of nitrogen fertilizers — is an energy-intensive process that produces carbon dioxide as an unavoidable chemical byproduct. At CF, however, we make ammonia in the most efficient way possible. CF utilizes the abundant natural gas resources of North America as our feedstock, which results in significantly fewer emissions than coal-based production in other parts of the world, notably China. In addition, as CF and others have increased natural gas-based capacity in recent years, many coal-dependent producers have decreased production. The net benefit is a substantial amount of avoided carbon emissions.
Question: Is technology helping to curb the environmental impact of your operations?
Will: Absolutely. CF operates the most efficient, state-of-the-art nitrogen manufacturing complexes in the world, and we make capital investments, where possible, to incorporate new, more energy-efficient technologies. Nevertheless, the fact remains that our ammonia plants essentially have reached the thermodynamic limits of efficiency. CF will always look to increase our manufacturing efficiencies, but we also are focusing our efforts toward the application phase of our products’ lifecycle, because that is where we believe there is the most opportunity for substantial improvements.
Question: What do these efforts look like?
Will: The environmental impacts of fertilizers, both in terms of water quality and greenhouse gas emissions, are minimized when they are applied properly. To that end, CF recently announced a second three-year grant to The Nature Conservancy to grow the 4R Plus campaign in Iowa and beyond. 4R Plus, which now has 50 partner organizations, is designed to spread adoption of both the 4Rs of fertilizer application — applying the right nutrient source at the right rate, right time, and right place — and complementary conservation practices, including no-till farming and cover crops. By adopting these practices, farmers can see their bottom lines improve along with their environmental impact. CF is very proud of the 4R Plus campaign’s progress to date, and the role we have played in its growth and development. By the end of 2019, we expect to have reached 90% of Iowa’s farmers with 4R Plus messaging at least seven times.
Question: How does CF’s culture support its sustainability priorities?
Will: We recently surveyed our employees to determine what sets the most successful teams at CF apart. The one quality that all top-performing teams shared: leadership. Leadership can take many forms, from having the courage to speak up about a safety concern to working to build talent among colleagues. To help foster leadership, CF developed a new set of competencies that are providing a common language for how to demonstrate leadership at every level of the organization. We truly believe that everyone at CF can be a leader and an integral part of our continued safe, reliable and efficient performance.
Question: CF is in the midst of transitioning to a new reporting cycle for nonfinancial disclosure. What is the reasoning behind this shift, and what is CF doing to enhance transparency in its sustainability reporting?
Will: Today, it is increasingly important for us to communicate how we evaluate our social and environmental performance alongside our financial performance and to be as transparent as possible. We enhanced our transparency earlier this year by reporting on all standards of the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) for the first time. With this accelerated publication of our 2018 report, we will be positioned to publish future reports in tandem with our Annual Report, which will further help to align and integrate our business and sustainability strategies.