Land-use emissions play a critical role in land-based mitigation for Paris climate targets

Abstract

Scenarios that limit global warming to below 2 °C by 2100 assume significant land-use change to support large-scale carbon dioxide (CO ₂) removal from the atmosphere by afforestation/reforestation, avoided deforestation, and Biomass Energy with Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS). The more ambitious mitigation scenarios require even greater land area for mitigation and/or earlier adoption of CO ₂ removal strategies. Here we show that additional land-use change to meet a 1.5 °C climate change target could result in net losses of carbon from the land. The effectiveness of BECCS strongly depends on several assumptions related to the choice of biomass, the fate of initial above ground biomass, and the fossil-fuel emissions offset in the energy system. Depending on these factors, carbon removed from the atmosphere through BECCS could easily be offset by losses due to land-use change. If BECCS involves replacing high-carbon content ecosystems with crops, then forest-based mitigation could be more efficient for atmospheric CO ₂ removal than BECCS.

Abstract

Land-based mitigation for meeting the Paris climate target must consider the carbon cycle impacts of land-use change. Here the authors show that when bioenergy crops replace high carbon content ecosystems, forest-based mitigation could be more effective for CO ₂ removal than bioenergy crops with carbon capture and storage.

Contributors

Anna B. Harper:

ORCID: http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7294-6039

[e-mail]

Journal

Journal ID (nlm-ta): Nat Commun

Journal ID (iso-abbrev): Nat Commun

Title: Nature Communications

Publisher: Nature Publishing Group UK (London )

ISSN (Electronic): 2041-1723

Publication date (Electronic): 7 August 2018

Publication date PMC-release: 7 August 2018

Publication date Collection: 2018

Volume: 9

Affiliations

[1 ]ISNI 0000 0004 1936 8024, GRID grid.8391.3, College of Engineering, Mathematics, and Physical Sciences, , University of Exeter, ; Exeter, EX4 4QF UK

[2 ]ISNI 0000 0004 1936 8024, GRID grid.8391.3, College of Life and Environmental Sciences, , University of Exeter, ; Exeter, EX4 4QF UK

[3 ]ISNI 0000 0004 1936 7603, GRID grid.5337.2, School of Geographical Sciences, , University of Bristol, ; Bristol, BS8 1SS UK

[4 ]ISNI 0000000094781573, GRID grid.8682.4, Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, ; Wallingford, OX10 8BB UK

[5 ]ISNI 0000000405133830, GRID grid.17100.37, Met Office Hadley Centre, ; FitzRoy Road, Exeter, EX1 3PB UK

[6 ]ISNI 0000 0004 1936 8403, GRID grid.9909.9, University of Leeds, ; Leeds, LS2 9JT UK

[7 ]ISNI 0000 0004 0457 9566, GRID grid.9435.b, Department of Meteorology, , University of Reading, ; Reading, RG6 6BB UK

[8 ]ISNI 0000 0001 0616 8355, GRID grid.437426.0, Department of Climate, Air and Energy, , Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency (PBL), ; PO Box 30314, 2500 GH The Hague, Netherlands

[9 ]ISNI 0000000120346234, GRID grid.5477.1, Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development, , Utrecht University, ; Heidelberglaan 2, 3584 CS Utrecht, The Netherlands

[10 ]ISNI 0000 0004 1936 973X, GRID grid.5252.0, Department of Geography, , Ludwig Maximilians University Munich, ; Luisenstr. 37, 80333 Munich, Germany

[11 ]ISNI 0000 0004 4910 6535, GRID grid.460789.4, Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l’Environnement, LSCE/IPSL, CEA-CNRS-UVSQ, , Université Paris-Saclay, ; 91191 Gif-sur-Yvette, France

[12 ]ISNI 0000 0001 0721 4552, GRID grid.450268.d, The Land in the Earth System, , Max-Planck Institute for Meteorology, ; Bundesstrasse 53, 20146 Hamburg, Germany

[13 ]ISNI 0000 0004 1936 9991, GRID grid.35403.31, Department of Atmospheric Sciences, , University of Illinois, ; Urbana, IL 61801 USA

[14 ]Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Institute of Meteorology and Climate Research—Atmospheric Environmental Research (IMK-IFU), Kreuzeckbahnstr. 19, Garmisch-Partenkirchen, 82467 Germany

[15 ]NASA GSFC, Biospheric Sciences Lab., Greenbelt, MD 20771 USA

Article

Publisher ID: 5340

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-018-05340-z

PMC ID: 6081380

PubMed ID: 30087330

Copyright statement: © The Author(s) 2018

License:

Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

Funding

Funded by: FundRef https://doi.org/10.13039/501100000266, Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC);

Award ID: EP/N030141/1

Award Recipient : Anna B. Harper

Funded by: FundRef https://doi.org/10.13039/501100000270, Natural Environment Research Council (NERC);

Award ID: NE/P014941/1

Award ID: NE/P014941/1

Award ID: NE/P014941/1

Award ID: NE/P014941/1

Award ID: NE/P014941/1

Award ID: NE/P019951/1

Award ID: NE/P014941/1

Award ID: NE/P015050/1

Award ID: NE/P014909/1

Award ID: NE/P015050/1

Award ID: NE/P015050/1

Award ID: NE/P014909/1

Award Recipient : Tom Powell Peter M. Cox Joanna House Chris Huntingford Timothy M. Lenton Stephen Sitch Sarah E. Chadburn William J. Collins Edward Comyn-Platt Garry Hayman Christopher P. Webber

Funded by: FundRef https://doi.org/10.13039/501100004963, EC | Seventh Framework Programme (European Union Seventh Framework Programme);

Award ID: GA603542

Award ID: GA603542

Award ID: GA603542

Award Recipient : Joanna House Stephen Sitch Andy Wiltshire

Funded by: FundRef https://doi.org/10.13039/501100007601, EC | Horizon 2020 (European Union Framework Programme for Research and Innovation);

Award ID: 641816

Award ID: 641816

Award Recipient : Eddy Robertson Andy Wiltshire

Funded by: FundRef https://doi.org/10.13039/100000001, National Science Foundation (NSF);

Award ID: NSF-AGS-12-43071

Award ID: NSF-AGS-12-43071

Award Recipient : Atul K. Jain Shijie Shu

Categories

Subject: Article

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issue-copyright-statement © The Author(s) 2018