By Lukie Pieterse, Potato News Today
A global perspective on how traditional fuels built the modern potato chain – and how renewables, biogas, and smarter storage are starting to redefine it.
The global potato industry is being quietly reshaped by something most consumers never see on a label: energy. Every stage of the chain – from fertilizer plants and irrigation pumps to storages, fryers and freezers – is tied to the price and availability of power. When gas, diesel or electricity costs jump, the effects ripple quickly through grower margins, contract talks, processing economics and, eventually, supermarket shelves and restaurant menus.
For decades, relatively cheap and predictable fossil energy underwrote the rise of large-scale irrigated production, sophisticated long-term storage, and high-throughput processing. That era is now giving way to a far more complex landscape. Volatile gas prices, carbon policies, corporate climate commitments and rapid advances in wind, solar, biomass and biogas are forcing potato businesses to rethink how they power their operations.
This is not simply a green conversation. It is a hard-headed commercial question about cost stability, risk management and future market access. As buyers tighten sustainability expectations and governments recalibrate energy systems, the balance between “old” and “new” energy is becoming a strategic factor in where potatoes are grown, how they are stored and processed, and who will remain competitive in a lower-carbon food system.
Old energy built the modern potato chain
For most of the last half century, the potato industry has quietly ridden on the back of relatively cheap fossil energy.
On the farm, diesel has powered tractors, planters, sprayers, and harvesters. Electricity and diesel have driven pumps for irrigation. Upstream, natural gas has underpinned nitrogen fertilizer production, while coal and gas have supplied industrial heat and power for processing plants.
Energy audits of potato production typically show that indirect energy – especially in chemical fertilizer – accounts for a large share of total energy use per hectare. One study in Iran, for example, found total energy consumption of around 47 GJ per hectare in potato production, with chemical fertilizers contributing roughly half of that input, and nitrogen alone about 40 percent.
Zooming out to the whole agrifood system, analysis by international agencies suggests that only about a quarter of energy use sits on farm (crop, livestock, fisheries), while around 45 percent is used in processing and distribution and roughly 30 percent in retail, preparation, and cooking. For potatoes, that means everything from pre-cooling and storage ventilation to peeling, frying, freezing, and cold-chain logistics has historically depended on fossil energy.
In short: without diesel, coal, gas and oil, the modern potato industry – with year-round supply of fresh and processed products – would not look the way it does today.
When fossil fuels become a moving target for costs
The reality growers and processors now face is that so-called old energy is no longer predictable in cost, nor politically neutral.
The past few years have underlined how tightly fertilizer plants, power generators and food processors are tied to global gas, oil, and coal markets. Spikes in natural gas prices in 2021–2022 drove up nitrogen fertilizer costs sharply, forcing some European fertilizer plants to curtail or shut production, and raising worldwide concern about reduced fertilizer use and lower crop yields.
Recent assessments by farm and financial institutions continue to link fertilizer price swings directly to energy markets. Natural gas remains the critical feedstock for most nitrogen fertilizers, so expectations of higher gas prices into 2025–2026 still translate into persistently higher baseline costs for ammonia and urea, even if prices are no longer at crisis peaks.
For potato chains, the message is blunt: as long as nitrogen, diesel and grid electricity are heavily fossil-based, their costs will move with geopolitical and energy market shocks. That volatility flows straight into production budgets, contract negotiations, and ultimately into retail prices.
Fertilizer: where gas prices meet potato yields
Potatoes are relatively input-intensive compared with many other crops. High yields demand carefully managed nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium, plus sulphur and micronutrients.
Because nitrogen fertilizer is so energy-intensive to produce, it often dominates the energy footprint of potato production. The Iranian study mentioned earlier found that chemical fertilizers alone accounted for almost half of total energy use per hectare in potato fields, dwarfing diesel use by comparison.
When gas prices surge, nitrogen prices follow. Analysts at both private companies and multilateral institutions have highlighted how gas spikes in Europe forced nitrogen producers to curtail operations, contributing to tight fertilizer markets and escalating prices worldwide.
For the potato sector this has several knock-on effects:
- Growers may be tempted – or forced – to cut application rates, risking yield and quality.
- Processors may have to adjust contract prices or specifications if tuber size, dry matter, or defects begin to shift.
- Regions heavily reliant on imported fertilizers or gas face greater vulnerability than those with local production or alternative nutrient sources.
In Europe, policy responses are already nudging a shift away from energy-intensive synthetic fertilizers towards recovered nutrients from manure and other organic streams, both to cut dependence on Russian gas and to reduce emissions. That trend could reshape fertilizer strategies for potato growers in the coming decade.
Potato irrigation and storage: plugged into volatile grids
Beyond fertilizers, water and storage are two other major energy sinks in potato systems.
For irrigated crops, diesel and electricity typically power pumps. A recent article aimed at UK growers noted that diesel and electricity are the main energy sources used to move water through irrigation systems – and that drought combined with high fuel prices created a painful double hit in recent seasons.
In storage, fans, compressors, heaters and control systems can push electricity consumption sharply higher, especially in large-scale facilities or under warm autumn conditions. Extension guides and on-farm trials in North America and Europe show how simple changes – such as installing variable speed drives on fans, better insulation, or more precise control systems – can cut energy use and shrinkage, often improving returns without sacrificing quality.
But when electricity prices spike, or when grid reliability becomes an issue, storage managers and processors suddenly discover just how exposed they are to old energy systems. In some emerging markets, unreliable power supplies already limit the ability to store potatoes long-term or to operate energy-intensive processing like freezing.
This is one of the key pressure points pushing the sector toward new energy options.
New energy on farm: solar pumps, smarter motors, and biogas
Renewable energy technologies are moving rapidly from demonstration projects to practical tools in farming.
Reports from international agencies on renewable energy in agrifood systems highlight a range of opportunities: solar-powered irrigation pumps, rooftop solar on barns and storages, small-scale biogas plants using crop residues and animal manure, and improved electric motors or drives that cut total energy demand.
In potato production and storage, this is beginning to translate into:
- Solar-powered irrigation in regions with strong solar resources but weak or expensive grids, such as parts of India and sub-Saharan Africa. Here, solar pumps reduce fuel costs and sometimes make irrigation viable where diesel was unaffordable.
- Rooftop or adjacent solar arrays on potato storages and sheds in Europe, North America and Australasia, helping offset fan and cooling loads during peak tariff periods.
- Efficient drives and controls that reduce overall electricity demand in storages, bringing down operating costs regardless of the power source.
- On-farm biogas from mixed feedstocks, where livestock and potatoes coexist, turning waste into heat or electricity.
These technologies are rarely a full substitute for grid power or diesel. But in combination, they can stabilise energy budgets, cut exposure to fossil fuel price spikes, and move businesses closer to the climate targets increasingly demanded by processors and retailers.
Processors pivoting to wind, solar, biomass and waste heat
If farms are the front end of the energy story, processing plants are the heavy industry at the back end. Here, the shift from old to new energy is becoming a strategic priority for some of the world’s largest potato companies.
One global French fry manufacturer has published targets to halve Scope 1 and 2 greenhouse gas emissions, move to 100 percent renewable electricity by 2030, and cease the use of coal by 2025 across its operations. Its resource-efficient operations program highlights the role of renewable electricity, heat recovery, and efficiency projects in cutting direct emissions and energy intensity.
In Canada, that same company is partnering on a dedicated renewable energy project near Coaldale, Alberta. The design incorporates wind turbines and solar installations sized to meet the electricity needs of an expanded processing facility, essentially tying a major potato plant’s power needs to local renewable generation.
Elsewhere in Europe, a processing site in the Netherlands shifted from fossil fuels to a 10 MW biomass boiler using low-grade composting residues to generate process steam for potato products. This replaces natural gas with locally sourced bioenergy, reducing both carbon emissions and exposure to gas price spikes.
On Canada’s east coast, Cavendish Farms has invested in converting potato processing waste into biogas. The company’s plant on Prince Edward Island uses an anaerobic digester to turn peelings and other residues into fuel, displacing part of its fossil energy demand and cutting waste disposal costs.
Taken together, these examples show that new energy in the potato industry is not just an abstract climate pledge. It is being wired directly into fryers, blanchers, boilers and freezers.
Policy, carbon accounting, and what buyers now expect
Energy choices in the potato chain are no longer just about cents per kilowatt-hour or dollars per litre of diesel. They are increasingly about carbon.
Governments in leading potato regions – including the European Union, Canada and parts of the United States – are tightening climate policies that directly or indirectly affect agriculture and food processing. Tools such as carbon pricing, emissions trading, and mandatory corporate climate reporting are all nudging companies to quantify and then reduce their emissions.
At the same time, multinational food retailers and quick-service restaurant chains are setting their own net-zero or science-based targets. For potato products, this means suppliers are under growing pressure to demonstrate reductions in Scope 1 and 2 emissions (direct fuel and electricity use), and to tackle Scope 3 emissions in their supply chains – including fertilizer, farm energy use, and transport.
As a result:
- Energy source decisions (coal vs gas vs renewables) in potato processing are becoming part of commercial negotiations.
- Growers are increasingly asked to provide data on fuel, fertilizer and electricity use.
- Investment decisions in storage upgrades or irrigation systems must now weigh both energy cost savings and emissions profiles.
The old assumption that energy is just a fixed overhead no longer holds.
What the transition looks like in different regions
Because energy systems and policies differ widely, the old–new energy transition in potatoes is playing out in very different ways around the world.
- In Western Europe, high gas and power prices, ambitious climate policies, and strong renewable support schemes are pushing rapid change. Fertilizer producers and processors alike warn about competitiveness risks, but the direction of travel is clearly away from coal and unabated gas, and toward biomass, biogas, solar and wind.
- In North America, relatively abundant gas supply has kept energy prices more moderate, but climate and ESG expectations from downstream buyers are pushing processors and large growers towards renewable electricity, waste-to-energy, and more efficient storage and irrigation systems.
- In emerging potato regions in Asia and Africa, basic energy access and grid reliability remain key constraints. Here, solar irrigation and decentralized renewables can be transformational, enabling more stable production and storage where diesel costs or power outages previously limited expansion.
- In South America and parts of Eastern Europe, decisions about new irrigated acreage, processing plants, or cold storage often coincide with broader national debates about grid expansion, hydropower, gas pipelines and large-scale renewables.
In all cases, the core question is the same: how can the potato sector reduce its dependence on volatile fossil fuels without undermining competitiveness or food security?
Practical questions every potato business should be asking
As the balance between old and new energy shifts, potato growers, storagemanagers and processors might find it useful to ask themselves a few hard questions:
- How exposed are we to diesel, gas or grid electricity price spikes today?
- What share of our energy use lies in fertilizer, irrigation, storage and processing – and where do the biggest savings sit?
- Which investments in efficiency (better insulation, variable speed drives, optimized ventilation) can pay back quickly, regardless of future energy prices?
- Is there scope for onsite renewables – solar, wind, biogas, biomass – to cover part of our load, especially at peak price times?
- How will our major customers judge us on emissions performance in 5–10 years, and what data will we need to supply?
The answers will differ from Prince Edward Island to Punjab, from the Netherlands to New Zealand. But the discipline of asking them is becoming part of modern potato risk management.
Looking ahead: potatoes in a lower-carbon food system
Potatoes occupy an interesting position in global food debates: a high-yielding, nutrient-rich crop that can deliver considerable food and energy per hectare, but also one that relies heavily on energy-intensive inputs and infrastructure.
As fossil fuels become more politically contested, more expensive to insure, and more tightly regulated, the industry’s historic dependence on old energy will look increasingly like a strategic vulnerability.
At the same time, the growing toolbox of new energy – from solar-powered irrigation and energy-smart storage to biogas-fed boilers and wind-powered processing plants – offers the sector a way to turn energy from a risk into a competitive advantage.
The transition will not be simple, nor evenly distributed. Some growers will struggle to finance upgrades. Some processors will question returns on major renewable investments. Policy uncertainty and grid constraints will complicate planning.
But the direction is clear: in the decades ahead, the most resilient potato businesses are likely to be those that understand their energy flows as well as their water, soils and markets – and that can steadily shift from volatile fossil dependence to a more diverse, efficient and renewable energy mix.
In that sense, the story of old and new energy in the potato industry is not just a technical story. It is a story about who will still be competitive, and still be growing and processing potatoes, when today’s young seed crops are being replaced by the next generation’s climate- and energy-smart varieties.
References and further reading
- Energy consumption and CO₂ emissions analysis of potato production (Esfahan, Iran):
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/271636359_Energy_consumption_and_CO2_emissions_analysis_of_potato_production_based_on_different_farm_size_levels_in_Iran - IRENA / FAO report on renewable energy for agri-food systems:
https://www.irena.org/publications/2021/Nov/Renewable-energy-for-agri-food-systems - McCain Foods – Resource-Efficient Operations and sustainability commitments:
https://www.mccain.com/sustainability/resource-efficient-operations/ - Coaldale Renewable Energy Project (wind and solar for a potato plant, Alberta, Canada):
https://elementalenergy.ca/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Coaldale-Renewable-Energy-Project-Newsletter-June-2024.pdf - Biomass boiler for process steam at PEKA Kroef (Netherlands potato processing industry):
https://www.ieabioenergy.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Wood-chips-combustion-for-process-steam-in-a-potato-processing-industry_CS1_T32.pdf - Cavendish Farms potato-waste-to-biogas projects (Prince Edward Island, Canada):
https://www.stantec.com/en/projects/canada-projects/c/cavendish-farms-potato-waste-conversion-to-natural-fuel-biogas-facility - Nutrien explainer on energy and fertilizer costs:
https://www.nutrien.com/news/stories/explainer-whats-driving-cost-fertilizer - Potato irrigation energy costs and efficiency (Potato News Today article):
https://potatoeswithoutborders.com/2023/04/09/how-a-trickle-approach-can-cut-potato-irrigation-energy-costs/
Author: Lukie Pieterse, Potato News Today