Nutrien Ltd. (NTR) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Hello, everyone. I'm Mayo Schmidt, President and CEO of Nutrien. Thank you for taking the time to join us today to learn more about our environment, social and governance commitments. These are exciting and important times for Nutrien and for the agriculture industry as a whole. There's never been a greater focus on ESG performance, and we have a critical role to play. The world's population is estimated to grow by another 2 billion people in the next 30 years and now is the time to act. We must work to provide nature-positive solutions and find new and innovative ways to feed more people using less resources and with fewer emissions. Across the ag value chain from crop inputs to retailers and most importantly, growers themselves, sustainability is a top priority. And as a fully integrated ground-to-grower business, with over 3,600 agronomists and field experts working directly with 500,000 growers globally, no company is in a stronger, more uniquely position to drive positive change for Nutrien. How will we do it? By turning economic success into social and environmental success. We have embedded sustainability into our governance structure, compensation targets, company strategy and the capital allocation framework. Because sustainability is key to our purpose and strategy, our approach to making commitments and setting targets spans all areas of our business and aspects of our culture, driven by our purpose to grow our world from the ground up, our teams have worked tirelessly developing plans, targets and commitments that you'll learn about today. I'm very proud of what we've accomplished to date and we are all excited to continue our positive momentum. Our plan is ambitious and will help to transform the agriculture industry in 3 priority areas: Feeding the planet sustainably, environment and climate action and inclusive agriculture. Together with our more than 23,000 employees and stakeholders around the world, we're excited to transform agriculture for the better and prove that feeding the future sustainably is possible. Growing up on a farm myself, I know firsthand that innovation and sustainability have always been a part of farming, and that our industry will meet the challenges ahead. [Presentation]

Thank you, Mayo, for your opening remarks and hello, everyone. Welcome to our ESG stakeholder update. My name is Candace Laing, and I am Vice President of Sustainability and Stakeholder Relations at Nutrien. Before we begin, I would like to remind our audience that today's presentation does include statements and other information that constitute forward-looking information as noted in this slide, which is also available on our website for review. We have a diverse group of stakeholders joining us today, and I want to welcome everyone participating in today's presentation and discussion. We are excited to provide insight into our sustainability and ESG strategy and initiatives, and we look forward to taking your questions at the end of today's presentation. You've heard from Mayo Schmidt, Nutrien's President and CEO, and I'm also joined today by Mark Thompson, Executive Vice President and Chief Corporate Development and Strategy Officer at Nutrien. Both of whom will be present in our Q&A at the end of the session, along with a few other colleagues who will also be joining us. Today, I'll provide a high-level overview of our sustainability commitments and ESG targets and then Mark will offer a deeper dive into key ESG initiatives with particular focus on our climate-related initiatives. With that, I will start us off with a few comments about the video we just saw and then provide an overview of Nutrien's Feeding the Future Plan. Having grown up on a family farm in Canada, I've seen firsthand how far agriculture has evolved and delivered on the need for increased food production. In my lifetime, my family's farm has made huge advancements in yields and resiliency. Today, we have the ability to have healthy and abundant crops, even in some pretty poor and dry conditions. In similar conditions in the 1980s, we were left without a crop in some years and really low yields in many others. Just think about how these advancements in agriculture have changed the world in our lifetime, including avoiding famine, protecting nature and preserving our carbon sink. As you saw in the video, agriculture is at a moment where it needs to evolve once again and embrace a sustainability strategy to build more resiliency in our food production and supply, and we believe we are uniquely positioned to engage and support growers on this mission. Our sustainability commitments represent our aspiration to leave this transformation or better put, leave the next evolution of agriculture. As Mayo mentioned, Nutrien's purpose is to grow our world from the ground up. This is what our organization is focused on each and every day from the bottom of our minds to the top of the grain bins, our employees around the world are committed to sustainably feeding the future. There is, however, a critical challenge or nexus between food and climate. This challenge is outlined within the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. The SDGs bring the world together to address 17 of the world's most important global environmental and social challenges, and we do this with this system's approach. For example, we know we cannot solve climate change if it threatens food security. This is why our main focus is to drive towards SDG 2: Zero Hunger, which includes a goal to scale sustainable and productive agriculture. This is an exciting time for our industry and Nutrien is well positioned to help lead the way. Within our Feeding the Future Plan, we have identified 3 areas for global impact: Feeding the planet sustainably, in environment and climate action and inclusive agriculture. The agriculture sector recognizes that it needs to build solutions and resiliency to feed a growing population as we deal with climate impacts, and much of this can be done with the help of innovative crop inputs, data analytics and digital tools and by implementing sustainable farming practices. In addition to feeding the planet with a focus on sustainable agriculture, we look to our own internal footprint in our operations as well. It is imperative that we challenge ourselves to do more, ensuring we reduce direct emissions in our operations and develop decarbonization pathways. And in addition to our global focus on food and climate, never has equity, diversity and inclusion been more important in our society, and our industry is no different. We have made equity, diversity and inclusion of priority and are focused on bringing more opportunities in agriculture to our stakeholders. And we will benefit from the value that this can bring to society, our industry and our company. Tied to our 3 areas for global impact are 6 ambitious commitments that will drive systemic change in agriculture by 2030. Our road map is laid out in Nutrien's Feeding the Future Plan, which was released in April, and it can be found on our website. Today, I'll walk through our commitments at a high level. First, innovation and agriculture is core to what we do. And we are looking to enable growers to adopt sustainable and productive agriculture on 75 million acres by 2030. This is not about a prescriptive set of practices but rather a focus on supporting growers in generating and tracking improved outcomes for soil and water as well as biodiversity, all while improving yields, likelihood and resiliency. An initial and important step towards scaling sustainable and productive agriculture is our focus on launching and scaling our carbon program. Accelerating climate-smart agriculture by rewarding growers for their ecosystem services, provides the backbone on which we can scale additional practice changes. Mark will be speaking in more detail today about our carbon program. We wouldn't focus on greenhouse and gas emissions at the field level without a focus on reducing emissions from our own operations. Nutrien has committed to setting science-based targets in alignment with the Paris Agreement. We are working with peers and partners to develop a sectoral decarbonization approach, which is one of the methods for setting science-based targets. As we continue to advance this work, we are already reducing our emissions and working towards a 30% intensity reduction of our Scope 1 and 2 emissions by 2030. We will also seek to maximize the investments we have made to date in low-carbon ammonia, working to develop the end markets for low-carbon ammonia and hydrogen, while selectively investing in low-carbon production technology platforms to position Nutrien to rapidly scale up production. With respect to inclusive agriculture, bold leadership and new opportunities are required to help stakeholders impacted by historical inequities and disparities in agriculture. We are focused on unique opportunities that can be leveraged to expand our outreach and relationships with diverse stakeholders. These include leveraging our financial solutions and services to engage and support diverse grower groups and also leveraging our scale and passion for farm-focused technology investments and partnerships as innovation can provide opportunities for new and diverse stakeholders to participate in agriculture. In addition to launching our Feeding the Future Plan, we are focused on continuous improvement of our overall ESG performance and have made great strides over the last year. We have gained momentum by integrating ESG governance across our organization, adopting key reporting frameworks, such as Sustainability Accounting Standards Board and through the task force on climate-related financial disclosures. And because performance measurement on key ESG issue is paramount, we have developed ESG targets and goals to drive our sustainability commitments and ESG strategy. With improved integration of ESG within our business, improved disclosures, along with active engagement with key ESG research firms, we have increased our ratings by approximately 20% this past year and has seen a significant improvement relative to our peers. But there is still room for further improvement and we look to advance on key topics such as water management and product stewardship, and we continue to align our reporting with the TCFD recommendations. All of this will help further our ESG performance and Nutrien's long-term value to all our stakeholders. As just discussed, performance management and continuous improvement of key ESG issues is paramount. Nutrien has developed several shorter-term ESG targets and goals that are aligned with our key material issues detailed in our ESG report. Some of these targets are also directly linked to compensation. To point out a few key areas, we have targets to support our emissions reduction plans, focused on reducing GHG emissions in our Nitrogen business by 1 million tonnes of CO2e by the end of 2023. And also deploying self-generated wind and solar energy at four of our potash facilities by the end of 2025. Water is seen as a rising or escalating material topic, and we look to deliver upon a water stewardship approach with tangible targets in 2023. From a social perspective, the importance of equity, diversity and inclusion continues to gain traction and recognition. Our strategy and efforts include many equity-seeking groups. And currently, we have developed targets related to our commitment to women in our organization and our indigenous engagement strategy. Safety is a daily focus, core value and continues to be a top priority at Nutrien, and we are challenging ourselves to be an industry leader across all our business units and operations. While some of our targets are developments, are still forming in nature, we will look to strengthen these targets and continue to drive our ESG performance improvement in the organization. As a reminder, our 2021 ESG report is available for viewing on our website and provide greater detail on each of our material topics. And with that, I will turn things over to Mark.

Thank you, Candace, and hello, everyone. I'm Mark Thompson, Executive Vice President and Chief Corporate Development and Strategy Officer at Nutrien. I'll be giving some additional detail on our carbon pilot program and Nutrien's overall commitments to climate action. In the next few slides, we'll outline Nutrien's ambitious plan to achieve at least a 30% reduction in the intensity of our Scope 1 and 2 emissions by 2030. This is an ambitious target but we aren't stopping there. As Candace mentioned, we've committed to setting a science-based emissions reduction target and are working in partnership with peers in our sector to develop a pathway for decarbonization that supports the world's journey towards net zero by 2050. Over the next 10 years, Nutrien expects to deploy approximately $500 million to $700 million to achieve our ambitious 30% reduction in emissions intensity, with most projects expected to generate attractive returns on capital, even without assigning a significant carbons cost assumption for our projects. Many of these projects will further improve the competitive position of our assets and also drive a meaningful reduction in our emissions footprint. These strategic priorities provide a framework through which will be prioritizing projects and enabling the deployment of proven technologies across our business. We'll be prioritizing low-risk and scalable technologies that can deliver the maximum impact in reducing our carbon footprint over the long term, while also continuing to maintain and enhance our competitive cost position. These projects will range from process improvements and energy efficiency initiatives at our facilities and operations to upstream and downstream opportunities, to reduce the emissions intensity of our energy sources as well as pursue the capture utilization or sequestration of emissions. We'll stay flexible and adapt to fast-changing and evolving policy environments with the capability to deploy a broad range of solutions to this complex opportunity. We've already made solid progress on some of the initiatives that I've just described. And we're executing on top-tier projects that will have a materially positive impact on reducing our Scope 1 and 2 emissions. As Candace mentioned, we have a short-term target for Nutrien's Nitrogen business to eliminate 1 million metric tonnes of CO2 equivalent by the end of 2023. Our first set of actions will be to implement a set of high-impact projects to achieve this. We're deploying a range of energy efficiency solutions in our operating facilities, increasing carbon capture, utilization and sequestration, while also installing the best available N2O abatement technology in our nitric acid facilities. Additionally, we plan to deploy self-generated wind and solar projects at four potash sites by 2025, providing scalable 0 carbon power. We also plan to deploy efficient cogenerated electricity and steam at various production sites. These initiatives are expected to not only lower emissions, but also reduce production costs and improve reliability at our facilities. Nutrien is starting from a position of strength, and we have a unique competitive advantage in our industry. We've been actively pursuing the development of low-carbon ammonia for more than a decade, which has positioned us as the leading global producer of low-carbon ammonia with up to 1 million tonnes of low-carbon ammonia available through our network today. Post 2030, we'll continue to drive the emissions reductions across our business, using a multipronged approach and to continue to enhance our capability to deliver low carbon blue and green ammonia products to our end markets and customers. Nutrien is able to leverage our unique global footprint and capabilities to support a broad base of sustainable agricultural objectives. Our global footprint, innovative products and services, digital tools and deep connections to the grower, ensure we are a leader in this space, and it positions us to drive meaningful nature-positive solutions while maximizing yields and profitability for our grower customers around the world. Leading with Nutrien's whole acre solutions approach, we are gearing up to enable sustainable agriculture on 75 million acres globally by 2030. These 75 million acres go beyond our groundbreaking carbon program. The carbon program provides a strong start with a focus on both soil and water outcomes and new revenue for growers. We'll build on this by adding biodiversity practices, along with our ability to measure impact for both productivity and sustainability outcomes. I'll now go into a little more detail about the carbon program that Nutrien is leading, in partnership with a diverse ecosystem of partners to identify the best solutions and outcomes for growers. Launched at the end of 2020, Nutrien's carbon program is accelerating development of foundational, digital and commercial capabilities that will support our long-term global ag sustainability commitment, unlocking the potential of production agriculture as a nature-based climate solution to meet the global decarbonization challenge and providing near and long-term means for growers to economically benefit from the adoption of climate-smart agricultural practices. Delivered through our retail division, Nutrien Ag Solutions, our differentiated end-to-end carbon program is focused on generating and monetizing high-quality carbon assets and credits, a process that starts with our trusted advisory relationship with growers. This relationship allows us to assess eligibility and establish a carbon baseline to measure future improvements, to build a customized whole acre solution, leveraging our broad suite of proprietary and third-party products, proven to maximize carbon outcomes, we provide season-long agronomic advice and services to support practice implementation and we'll measure end of season carbon outcomes using industry accepted standards and protocols, leveraging field level data and science-based methods of quantification. Then we'll independently validate and verify carbon outcomes to ensure quality and ultimately, support our growers in the monetization of carbon asset and utilize our digital hub to track data and provide insights to maximize economic, agronomic and sustainability performance. Nutrien is uniquely positioned to deliver a seamless grower experience that generates an attractive farm ROI and maximizes environmental outcomes and value creation through the adoption of sustainable agronomic products and practices. We have all the products, services and capabilities that growers need in one place. This includes our digital sustainability platform, Agrible, which enables us to collect, store and manage farm and field level data, including as applied machinery data through future deployment of our recent AgBridge acquisition. We can model carbon outcomes and generate sustainability insights and reporting for growers. We offer leading soil sampling capabilities through our Waypoint Analytical business to collect and analyze soil samples at scale to baseline soil carbon and reliably measure future improvements. Our digital agronomy and field services support variable rate fertilizer prescriptions and applications to support more efficient use of nitrogen in the field. And we offer a broad suite of proprietary fertility and seed products, including our flagship, slow and controlled release nitrogen product, ESN, and a variety of value-added nutritional products to improve nutrient use efficiency. Our carbon program in 2021 is focused on a series of pilots that span across Canada and the U.S., where we're working directly with growers, hand in hand on 200,000 acres to incentivize the adoption of a comprehensive set of agronomic practices to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and improve soil carbon sequestration. This number of acres significantly exceeds our initial pilot target of 100,000 acres and is a general reflection of the very strong interest and engagement from growers and Nutrien's stakeholders, including our numerous collaborators and partners. Nutrien is taking what we are referring to as a portfolio approach to our 2021 carbon pilots to gather and apply key learnings to develop the most viable, credible and scalable pathways to generate high-quality and monetizable carbon assets for our growers. We believe this approach is the optimal way to understand the requirements and directly address the limitations of currently available standards and protocols and to develop and implement the best science-based methods of carbon measurement at scale to accurately quantify carbon performance in inherently variable cropping systems. Our portfolio approach is multilayered and it includes working with several protocols and execution partners with companies such as Corteva, BASF, Maple Leaf and PepsiCo, to name just a few, in order to generate assets in a real farm operating environment. A focus on creating a diversity of carbon assets includes: carbon offsets that can be purchased by cross-industry buyers to offset Scope 1 and 2 emissions and supply chain interventions that are enabled by ag value chain participants to improve shared, on farm, indirect Scope 3 emissions. We're working on the development of compliance and voluntary monetization pathways, depending on the jurisdiction and developing partnerships with a broad base of major industry stakeholders to combine expertise and capabilities, share key learnings and jointly develop a path to maximize sustainability outcomes and value for growers. The learnings from our 2021 pilot will form the basis from which we'll be able to scale our carbon program in North America and launch in other operating jurisdictions, including South America and Australia in the future.

Thanks, Mark. Hopefully, we've provided some beneficial background and context to our strategy and commitments. But I will close by speaking a bit about how we're approaching this work. We are working together in partnership with a broad group of stakeholders in order to scale these efforts. We are using science, innovation and technology to help shape solutions and guide our decisions. And we are connecting economic success to our ESG success to deliver value and accelerate our ability to scale solutions and achieve outcomes. We've developed our Feeding the Future Plan with concrete targets and commitments that will drive resiliency and long-term value for all of our stakeholders. Now that you've heard from us, we are looking forward to hearing from you. We have a team here to help answer any questions you may have. In addition to Mayo, Mark and myself, we also have with us Raef Sully, our Executive Vice President and CEO of Nitrogen and Phosphate operations; and Brent Smith, our Nutrien Ag Solutions Vice President of Marketing, Sustainability and Proprietary Products. We're happy to answer your questions or speak in greater detail on anything that was presented today. Richard Downey, Vice President of Investor Relations, will be moderating our Q&A session.

Good morning, everyone. It's Richard Downey here. Thank you for joining us. I think we have well over 200 participants this morning, and we're going to lead off with the -- into Q&A section of the morning. The first question comes from Global Compact Network Canada. And they -- Ayman Chowdhury, who's executive director, is asking how does Nutrien's feeding the future program, provide relevant strategy, data and commitments to the 10 principles of UN Global Compact and the SDGs. Candace, I think this is a question for you.

Thanks, Richard. And thanks, Ayman, I think that's a great question to kick off our Q&A session today. When I think about the global compact principles, I think they really, really are outlining what are some core ESG topics and actually have led the way in some key ESG disclosure. When you think about the carbon program specifically or our Feeding the Future Plan, I think what that means in terms of the principles, as you'll see from Nutrien in our annual communication of progress that we really will be stepping up what we share in terms of the environmental pieces of the principles and pillars. With respect to the sustainable development goals, we talked about Nutrien's primary contribution being around SDG #2 and ending hunger, but our impact on the SDGs, of course, doesn't end there. We impact a lot of the SDGs. And we know that stakeholders, including investors, are more and more interested all the time to make informed decisions around the company's broader value chain impacts on the SDGs, including both our positive and negative impacts. One of the challenges we're working through is just some of the tools that are very much in the developmental stage or formative stage that help a company assess their value chain impacts. They need some time to help get us better set to get the full depth and impact and scale of impact on the SDGs. But nonetheless, we have taken a first attempt at a high level value chain impact assessment. And we'll work to improve that over time as the tools take shape and the methods become better available to us. So there is a link to our SDG impact assessments in both our Feeding the Future Plan document, and you can also find it in our ESG report.

Thanks, Candace. And we understand that some people had a hard time seeing the full slide. So we are getting those slides up on the web page and in a printable form PDF downloadable. So the next question comes from GlobeScan, Salim Binbrek asks, thank you for clarifying your ESG governance approach. I'm wondering if you can say more about how you've linked ESG targets and performance to leadership compensation. And Mayo, I think this is a question for you.

Thank you, Richard. And thank you, Salim. Yes, our approach to evaluation and compensation considers ESG factors. In the current year 2021, we have multiple ESG metrics linked to our annual incentive scorecard, which underlines the importance for us of ESG. These metrics will include safety. They'll include our environment and define targets on inclusion targets as well as additional key performance indicators within our corporate scorecards. These are administered by our Board of Directors. These scorecards are focused on successful execution of specific projects that support our greenhouse gas emissions reductions. Thank you, Richard.

Thanks, Mayo. Our next question is from U.S. Farmers and Ranches in Action. Erin Fitzgerald asks what is needed to improve the broader awareness of agriculture's role in the transition to a net-zero economy. What is Nutrien doing to advance leadership on nature-based climate solutions for the upcoming conversations at COP? Why is agriculture typically not at the table? Candace, this one's for you.

Thanks, Richard, and thanks, Erin. It's definitely a good callout that there's so much happening in shifting in the external context around climate and agriculture's role in it and being able to provide solutions. And we need agriculture at the table in order to reach the goals of the Paris Agreement and as you say, are in transition to a net-zero economy. A fundamental aspect in realizing the potential agriculture can bring is creating this business case for growers to scale practice changes and making sure the economic fundamentals are in place to scale those practice changes. So we would agree with the view and discussions leading up to COP26 that carbon finance is this key missing piece of our global climate solution, and look forward to the discussions at the next COP meeting around Article 6 and the topic of voluntary carbon markets being leveraged. Agriculture, as you say, isn't always at the table or hasn't always been at the table. Even in discussions that are focused on natural climate solutions, often we think about forestry first and we know agriculture has a lot to contribute as well. So Nutrien, we're engaged with many organizations and partners leading up to both COP26 this year, but also the UN Food Systems Summit. And we're also engaged in a lot of other projects and initiatives like the Natural Climate Solutions Alliance and some of those other initiatives through World Economic Forum and World Business Council for Sustainable Development. To sound optimistic, it is really great to see at these tables more and more that farmer organizations and farmers themselves are represented at these tables, and that includes being USFRA around the table, which is great. There does seem to be an increasing recognition that we need to keep growers at the center of our efforts. Otherwise, we get stuck, and we can't scale our efforts. As you've heard today, we are deeply focused on working at the field level as well to be sure we can produce valued and robust emissions reductions and removals. And our focus is to help growers actually be ready so they can quantify their environmental contributions. And we can attach value to that and they can actually be rewarded for environmental outcomes, and then we can make sure agriculture can be recognized and deliver on climate solutions. Thanks, Richard.

Thanks. The next question is from Adam Samuelson from Goldman Sachs. Describe the OpEx and CapEx implications of your ESG 2030 commitments, how, if at all, do you -- do they impact your existing OpEx, maintenance CapEx run rate? And where is there -- and where is the increased investment? Do you foresee risk-adjusted returns at or above your existing hurdle rates? Mayo, I think this is a question for you.

Thank you, Richard. And Adam, we have prioritized pipeline projects that will collectively assist us in achieving a 30% reduction in Scope 1 and 2 GHG intensity by 2030. A number of these programs are in flight. We do anticipate a capital investment over the next 9 years of approximately $500 million to $700 million to achieve our goal, with most projects generating attractive returns on capital without requiring a significant cost of carbon assumption. Our projects include N2O abatement, energy efficiency initiatives, cogeneration, a carbon capture and sequestration. We are moving forward on the lowest capital and highest impact opportunities first, and we've already approved and are actively working on a series of targeted projects that we expect to capture approximately 1 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent by the end of 2023. This is a considerable commitment and undertaking to build momentum as a powerful start to our 2030 targets. So managing prudently, we don't anticipate our projects adding any material operating cost to our business. However, we do expect our projects to increase reliability and efficiencies of operations. And in an increasing cost of carbon environment in the future, we would expect some of the operating cost savings from our lower exposure to carbon compliance cost. So thank you, Richard.

Thanks, Mayo. The next question comes from Jacob Bout with CIBC. How does Nutrien monetize on the comprehensive carbon program opportunity? What is the cross-selling opportunity, increased performance, proprietary sales, agronomy, echelon services, et cetera? What metrics are being tracked to determine the success of the program. And I think this will be both for Mark and Mayo.

Thank you, Richard. I'll start, and then I'll turn it over to Mark here. Thank you, Jacob. Nutrien launched the carbon program in late 2020, and we've had tremendous uptake on our pilot programs. We're working directly with the diverse group of growers and partners. And 2021 will be a key year of learning as to how we roll out that program. And Mark, perhaps you'd like to comment?

Sure. Thank you, Mayo, and thanks, Jacob, for the question. So as Mayo mentioned, we've had very strong interest in the program. We originally targeted 100,000 acres of participation in the program. And as we announced this morning, we've effectively doubled that number and frankly, probably had demand to even exceed the doubling that we've enrolled in the program. And from our perspective, when we first announced the program back in 2020, I think we are quite strong and consistent in saying that this was really, first and foremost, about the grower. And if we can help the grower to benefit from this type of program, Nutrien will be the trusted partner over time. And the interest we've seen so far, I think, from our perspective, is an indication of the strong interest that's out there from the grower community in understanding carbon programs and participating in them. From an agronomic standpoint, based on our work and what we're seeing so far, we do think there's a return on investment that could generate up to $30 per acre just from the agronomic implementation of practices and products in our program. And on top of that, we've also talked about an illustrative carbon benefit of roughly $10 to $20 an acre. So that's meaningful uptick and improvement in grower profitability. And when we look at what this means for Nutrien, I think there's a few key ways that we can create value in our business, given that executing on this type of program is going to require us to have a very strong and close partnership with our customers. First and foremost, as we've described, we're going to be using our Agrible digital tools in our digital experience to enroll the grower through our crop planning process and executing against those crop plans with a variety of our products, including opportunities for better penetration of our proprietary Loveland products as well as pull-through of our supply chain partners, products and technologies as we execute on those plans. We've also talked a little bit about our Waypoint Analytical business and the role that plays in executing on the carbon program. And of course, from a science-based perspective, that's very important for baselining of data and carbon performance, but there's a real commercial opportunity there as well. As we use the Waypoint platform to really baseline and create evidence throughout this process and build a stronger relationship with our growers. And of course, agronomic services. So these would be things like variable rate scripting through our nitrogen management programs and approaches as well as opportunities to bring to bear new financial solutions through Nutrien Financial, which we expect will evolve and change over time as well. So just in those couple of buckets, I think we see very tangible opportunities to create more value for Nutrien through this program. And then, Jacob, you'd also asked about what we'll be tracking and monitoring. I think, first and foremost, given the nature of the program, we'll be monitoring the carbon benefits in the greenhouse gas emissions reductions through the program as obviously, that's going to be a major proof point to understand how growers are going to benefit from the carbon assets that are created. Second, we'll be looking at the ROI overall for growers of the program as a whole and the implementations of these products and practices as well as their performance in the field. And then lastly, from a Nutrien perspective, for those participating in the program, we'll obviously be keenly interested in monitoring our margin opportunity, how our relationships change and grow with those growers, the product shelves that we're implementing and the products and services overall that constitute a growers' participation in the program. So those are the things we'll be monitoring throughout the 2021 pilots.

Thanks, Mark. And I think I have another one for you here from another sell-side analyst. Other companies such as Yara and Bayer have introduced their own carbon programs. What makes Nutrien's carbon program different or better? And what are the strategic advantages of Nutrien's program over these other programs.

Yes. Thank you, Richard. And obviously, right now, across all industries globally, there's a major push to develop solutions that can address climate change. And I think from our perspective, there's been a huge amount of excitement and optimism around opportunities in our own sector in agriculture, and this has led to a lot of focus and interest on these types of carbon programs and announcements and initiatives in our sector, and they're very diverse. I think it's important to say today. So these range from single products and point solutions, all the way to the type of comprehensive end-to-end program that we've launched and that we think is the right path for Nutrien to the extent that this level of interest from those launching these programs creates a better quality and ultimately, a more scalable platform for carbon asset generation over time. We think that's all positive for growers because they have a better end product and opportunity. Over time, however, I think our belief would be that like most things, we're going to see the industry and stakeholders around the industry coalesce around a few of these platforms and approaches. And obviously, we want Nutrien to be one of those. So we've taken a very robust comprehensive and science-based approach to how we've designed our carbon pilots for 2021, and we want our program to stand the test of time. Certainly, in our view, in terms of what makes us unique, Nutrien's access to the grower, where we sit in the value chain, our over 3,500 agronomists, the products, the services, the technologies that we can bring to bear, our acquisitions historically of Agrible, of Waypoint Analytical, of AgBridge and then the investments that we've made in our own digital experience, combined, again, with the unique spot we sit in the value chain, I think from our perspective, puts us in a very unique position to succeed here. But equally important, and I'll just talk about this for a minute. We fundamentally don't believe that any one company is going to have sort of a single solution or a single approach that ultimately solves this. It's a very comprehensive and complex opportunity we're looking to address here. And so as we announced today, what we're calling our portfolio approach really takes all the infrastructure I've described from the Nutrien's standpoint but also pulls in partners from across the value chain. As an example, some of our key suppliers and downstream players, so we can bring the great capabilities from all of us really together in one place to provide a better opportunity for our customers to benefit over time. And one of those is pulling together an ecosystem that allows for better monetization of the carbon assets we're going to create and a group of stakeholders to increase that opportunity for growers. In a similar way, we're also taking a portfolio approach to looking at opportunities across geographies, across cropping systems. We're putting multiple protocols to the test in our pilots. So we've talked about Verra, CAR, ESMC, Soil and Water Outcomes Fund in the U.S. and then in Canada, leveraging some of the compliance-based protocols across our pilots. And we think this is also important to figure out what works, what doesn't, to improve and understand the protocol is better over time, so we can ultimately scale them up and create a more successful pathway for growers to participate. So I think all of those things collectively, in our view, differentiate us and make us quite different here.

Great. Thanks, Mark. We have a number of questions along the same lines, Ben Isaacson from Scotia and P.J. Juvekar from Citi, both asked about Nutrien and what are we doing with regard to increasing our blue and green ammonia production. Are projects currently underway? What are your thoughts on the hydrogen market-related and related impact to the nitrogen market? Raef, I think this is right up our ally. Can you give us through your thoughts?

Yes, I'd love to. Great question. So I guess the first thing I want to say is that we sell blue ammonias today. We make probably 1 million tonnes of lower carbon ammonia products. So it's available. Some of the product that we make in our Louisiana facility, Geismar, has half the carbon footprint of normal carbon. That said, we are in discussions with customers today, potentially to purchase that. We also are looking at 3 different technologies here for additional blue and green. Obviously, there's a lot of discussion in the market about electrolysis from renewable sources being used to produce green ammonia. We are considering that. It is a little problematic from an economic perspective. It takes about 5x the capital and 5x the operating cost compared to normal steam methane reforming to produce a tonne of ammonia using electrolysis, and we're not sure that we could find a customer willing to buy that at the moment. But there are 2 other technologies that I think quite interesting. One is pyrolysis of methane. The byproduct of that is just carbon. And it probably has an energy consumption about eighth of electrolysis to produce green ammonia. The other is what we call auto thermal reforming or ATR. And it's a little bit different from steam methane reforming. It's probably a little bit higher cost from a capital perspective. A little bit higher cost from an operating perspective, but much more economically possible. And so we're looking at that as well. When we think about the market here, the global ammonia market is 150 million tonnes. It's been growing at 1.5 million to 2.5 million tonnes a year. So there's a lot of potential there for green ammonia in the future. What we see -- what we think the initial areas of focus will be for green hydrogen or green ammonia will be transportation, long-distance transportation. Trucks on roads using fuel cells, potentially trains, but also offshore ocean-going vessels. And so we're looking actively at those opportunities and are in discussions.

Great. Thanks, Raef. Next question is from -- let me just -- from Joel Jackson from BMO. How do you see down the road the mix of carbon-related revenue for growers, split between government credits and, say, food ingredient producers paying crop premiums for more sustainable crops? Mark, do you want to take -- handle that one?

Sure. Thanks, Richard, and thanks Joel, for the question. I've got a couple of thoughts, maybe I'll just provide, and then I might also pass it over to Brent Smith, who's on the line with us as well. I think, Joel, you've called out 2 direct sources of revenue that we think really can benefit growers over time from participation in these programs. I think you've called out government credits as a source of revenue. In our view, the compliance market or the government-driven market, as you call it, will just be one source of opportunity from a carbon asset monetization standpoint. We're already seeing the voluntary market scale up and a number of our supply chain partners are interested in the voluntary carbon asset or carbon credit system as well. So we're hopeful that both compliance based systems and the voluntary market will provide multiple opportunities for growers to monetize the assets they're going to create through programs like Nutrien's. On the other side of the equation, what you've called out in terms of the downstream opportunity, one of the really unique reasons we like the Agrible platform when we made the acquisition of Agrible, was that they were participating in projects and opportunities with downstream buyers that did exactly what you were talking about, looking at sustainable farming practices and attributes in crops to create monetization or differentiation opportunities for growers downstream. I think, frankly, given how early and nascent the spaces on both of these fronts, we'd be guessing if we tried to call an exact split, but we absolutely think both of these opportunities are going to be there over time. And I think one of the other things I'd point to is, while we've really built the infrastructure around carbon, we also expect that this infrastructure we've built will allow us to create programs in areas like, say, water outcomes and biodiversity outcomes, which when you think about downstream buyers and the types of practices and products they're looking for to differentiate, we think we'll be ideally positioned in time for that as well. So I might just ask Brent, who's leading our commercial execution in this area to share a few thoughts as well.

Sure. And thanks, Mark, and appreciate the question. So we are engaged with several downstream players, Mark mentioned, Agrible, has really enabled a lot of those conversations. We're proud to have PepsiCo, Ingredion and Maple Leaf as part of our carbon pilots. But when we're talking about -- we're going to be doing beyond carbon soil, water, air, there's -- our thesis is we are going to work directly with downstream partners to help engage. And really, it's part of how we're sitting in the value chain, being the retailer and having trusted adviser relationships with over 500,000 growers worldwide and inviting people in like food companies like a PepsiCo and Maple Leaf to the table with the grower to benefit the grower. And so we think that, that's going to be a core piece of what our strategy is really around the portfolio approach.

Thanks, gentlemen. Our next question from the audiences, will Nutrien offer more environmentally friendly products for growers to support sustainable acres? I think that's actually from Rikin from Exane. And I think Raef -- this probably is for Raef and actually, Brent from Nutrien Ag Solutions' perspective, maybe you want to add a couple of thoughts as well. But Raef, why don't you start?

Yes. Thanks, Richard. So the answer is absolutely. We already have a really good product out there called ESN, which is a slow release urea product. And farmers apply that, it's a much more efficient application of urea. It also reduces quite substantially any end to our emissions given off, which improves the greenhouse gas footprint. That now we're going to increase production of that ESN. That's how we've looked at -- you may have been aware, we've gone through a phase of brownfield expansions. We've got another phase of these brownfield expansions coming up. And one of the key projects within there is expansion of our ESN production capability. So we're doing that. We're also actively looking for other solutions out there as part of ongoing product development or innovation program within nitrogen. And so we hope to be able to, over time, offer other solutions besides ESN.

And then I can jump in, too. So when we talk about an end-to-end comprehensive program, part of that end-to-end is solution based. And so when we think about working with our growers and our agronomists to build out the best solution to get the desired outcome, whether that's carbon or soil or water or air, we're putting together a variety of products. And it could be like Raef said, ESN. It could be low carbon ammonia, but it's also including products that we have in our portfolio that we've invested heavily in over the last decade. And we've invested over $800 million over the last decade in building out and investing in technologies and companies that are building out products that can help deliver the desired outcomes that we're looking for. So Actagro was a recent acquisition about 3 years ago with the C2 Technology. We have investments in biologicals. We have a robust pipeline around nutrient-use efficiency. And so when we're building these solutions, we're going to be using, in a lot of cases, our own innovations, but back to the portfolio approach with our partners that are also some of the biggest innovators in agriculture will be using their technologies as well and really building that solution that not only is delivering that desired outcome but is delivering a positive ROI for our customer, the grower.

Thanks, Brent. And actually, just to build off that, I just saw a question pop up here that would be for both Mark and you, Brent, that sort of was asking, are you worried about reduced crop inputs eating into your business by encouraging sort of reduced use or more efficient use? Any thoughts on that front?

Yes. I think that's a great question. And I think the answer for us is no. What we're going to be doing is we're going to be taking a solution approach with our growers and with our agronomists. And building out the right solution, and we're going to be leveraging other things like our investment in Waypoint Analytical like AgBridge, our Loveland products, our Dyna-Gro and Proven Seed, our third party relationships, our digital agronomy opportunities, our field planning tool on our digital hub. All of these things have been invested in to ultimately drive to a very proactive conversation with our growers around delivering solutions that are delivering an ROI for the grower, but also the desired outcome. And so our thesis is, as we're able to do that, we will actually increase retention. We'll increase grower acquisition, we'll increase share of wallet because we are bringing the right technologies, third-party or our own to deliver those outcomes for a grower and for the environment.

Thanks, Brent. We have a question from Dean Highmoor from Mackenzie Investments. We've discussed -- you've discussed a 30% intensity reduction of Scope 1 and 2 emissions by 2030. How much will absolute emissions decline from your 2018 baseline by 2030? Candace, are you able to get some thought on that?

Yes, sure. Bear with me. It's an interesting question. So while we could at this point, easily translate our intensity target into absolute terms. We just don't want to go there yet. It would be premature as we're engaged in the process of setting science-based targets. And what we know today about setting science-based targets is we're hard to abate sector. And we have some challenges. If you apply the contraction method today and a 1.5-degree scenario, we would have a gap between what would be expected in absolute terms and we can deliver. So that underscores the need and reason why we're engaged with our peers and partners in using a sectoral method and the SDA method to set our science-based targets. So just a little bit about that. We're partnered up with Yara and WBCSD and engaging others in our industry. And we look at then what makes sense for the carbon budget for our sector and take into account a pathway that we can engage in. And it starts with just in case people are also curious, a focus on our Scope 1 and 2 emissions. But for Nutrien, our Scope 3 emissions would be material as well. And eventually, we would hope to include that in our science-based target setting process as well. Thanks, Richard.

Thanks, Candace. And from Vincent Andrews with Morgan Stanley, what is the level of engagement with the USDA and other government agencies in terms of further incentivizing the farmer carbon program. And I know, Brent, you've been -- you're leading one of the main teams on this. Do you have some thoughts on that?

Sure. Vincent, thanks for the question. So I recently met with the USDA and really was quite encouraged by the level of engagement, number one. But number two, the openness to collaboration. And so our main messages are, there's certainly things that need to be addressed from whether we're talking about permanence or additionality or even the protocols as you get to what actually verifies a high-quality carbon asset. But I think the messages that we share is, look, I think government plays -- will need to play a role in the U.S. and other jurisdictions around the world. But I don't think it's a control role. I think it's more of how do we bring order to the carbon marketplace. Also, focusing -- and you've heard it a lot today from Candace and Mark and other speakers, not focused so much on the practices, but really what the outcomes are that those practices are giving us and what that environmental outcome is around soil, water and air. And so our belief in the conversation that I've had and we've had with the USDA is really around being complementary versus competing, and we're certainly supporters of voluntary markets, and I think all of that has been well received. And so we will stay engaged, but early days, very happy with how those discussions are going.

Thanks, Brent. I think we're coming up to the hour here, and we'll end with this last question. We are seeing more and more evidence -- this is actually from the World Business Council for Sustainable Development from David Bennell. We are seeing more and more evidence that well-managed companies manage risk well. It is evident that Nutrien is well down the road and integrating ESG risks and opportunities with its business strategy. But what in particular was at the heart of the ability to effectively navigate the COVID-19 and experience minimal disruption. Mayo, do you want to speak to that?

Sure. Thanks, Richard. And David, Nutrien's continue to operate as an essential services throughout the pandemic. With the onset of COVID-19, we quickly organized internal cross-functional teams, which are still in place today and making decisions and navigating, of course, a very fluid situation. So it's our belief that our strong performance in the core areas of ESG have really helped us to weather this storm. Some of the areas include safety, human capital management and community relations. So really being able to lean on our safety culture and practices allowed us to very quickly adapt to ensure we could operate safely and in addition, our approach to handling employee needs and workplace policies mattered a great deal throughout this pandemic and how Nutrien treated other stakeholders in our supply chains and communities were very valuable. So Richard, over to you.

Thanks, Mayo. Actually, that is the last question of the day. Mayo, any closing remarks?

Sure. Thank you, Richard. So in closing, I'd like to say, I couldn't be more proud of Nutrien's commitments in the work of our teams and the effort that they put forth. Our plans are certainly ambitious. And the path to execution and achievement of our commitments is solid. ESG is ingrained in our governance and our compensation, strategy and our capital framework. With Nutrien's businesses spanning a global value chain, we're uniquely positioned to lead and to drive this change. So this is indeed a very exciting time for us as an organization, as individuals. So I wish for you, health and safety, and we thank you for joining us today. Thank you, Richard.