̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - carbon emissions

Personal carbon footprint of the rich is vastly underestimated by rich and poor alike, study finds

sc604 — Thu, 12 Sep 2024 09:00:23 +0000

An international group of researchers, led by the Copenhagen Business School, the ̽��ֱ�� of Basel and the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, surveyed 4,000 people from Denmark, India, Nigeria and the United States about inequality in personal carbon footprints – the total amount of greenhouse gases produced by a person’s activities – within their own country.

Although it is well-known that there is a large gap between the carbon footprint of the richest and poorest in society, it’s been unclear whether individuals were aware of this inequality. ̽��ֱ��four countries chosen for the survey are all different in terms of wealth, lifestyle and culture. Survey participants also differed in their personal income, with half of participants belonging to the top 10% of income in their country.

̽��ֱ��vast majority of participants across the four countries overestimated the average personal carbon footprint of the poorest 50% and underestimated those of the richest 10% and 1%.

However, participants from the top 10% were more likely to support certain climate policies, such as increasing the price of electricity during peak periods, taxing red meat consumption or subsidising carbon dioxide removal technologies such as carbon capture and storage.

̽��ֱ��researchers say that this may reflect generally higher education levels among high earners, a greater ability to absorb price-based policies or a stronger preference for technological solutions to the climate crisis. ̽��ֱ��results are reported in the journal Nature Climate Change.

Although the concept of a personal carbon or environmental footprint has been used for over 40 years, it became widely popularised in the mid-2000s, when the fossil fuel company BP ran a large advertising campaign encouraging people to determine and reduce their personal carbon footprint.

“There are definitely groups out there who would like to push the responsibility of reducing carbon emissions away from corporations and onto individuals, which is problematic,” said co-author Dr Ramit Debnath, Assistant Professor and Cambridge Zero Fellow at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge. “However, personal carbon footprints can illustrate the profound inequality within and between countries and help people identify how to live in a more climate-friendly way.”

Previous research has shown widespread misperceptions about how certain consumer behaviours affect an individual's carbon footprint. For example, recycling, shutting off the lights when leaving a room and avoiding plastic packaging are lower-impact behaviours that are overestimated in terms of how much they can reduce one’s carbon footprint. On the other end, the impact of behaviours such as red meat consumption, heating and cooling homes, and air travel all tend to be underestimated.

However, there is limited research on whether these misperceptions extend to people’s perceptions of the composition and scale of personal carbon footprints and their ability to make comparisons between different groups.

̽��ֱ��four countries selected for the survey (Denmark, India, Nigeria and the US) were chosen due to their different per-capita carbon emissions and their levels of economic inequality. Within each country, approximately 1,000 participants were surveyed, with half of each participant group from the top 10% of their country and the other half from the bottom 90%.

Participants were asked to estimate the average personal carbon footprints specific to three income groups (the bottom 50%, the top 10%, and the top 1% of income) within their country. Most participants overestimated the average personal carbon footprint for the bottom 50% of income and underestimated the average footprints for the top 10% and top 1% of income.

“These countries are very different, but we found the rich are pretty similar no matter where you go, and their concerns are different to the rest of society,” said Debnath. “There’s a huge contrast between billionaires travelling by private jet while the rest of us drink with soggy paper straws: one of those activities has a big impact on an individual carbon footprint, and one doesn’t.”

̽��ֱ��researchers also looked at whether people’s ideas of carbon footprint inequality were related to their support for different climate policies. They found that Danish and Nigerian participants who underestimated carbon footprint inequality were generally less supportive of climate policies. They also found that Indian participants from the top 10% were generally more supportive of climate policies, potentially reflecting their higher education and greater resources.

“Poorer people have more immediate concerns, such as how they’re going to pay their rent, or support their families,” said first author Dr Kristian Steensen Nielsen from Copenhagen Business School. “But across all income groups, people want real solutions to the climate crisis, whether those are regulatory or technological. However, the people with the highest carbon footprints bear the greatest responsibility for changing their lifestyles and reducing their footprints.”

After learning about the actual carbon footprint inequality, most participants found it slightly unfair, with those in Denmark and the United States finding it the most unfair. However, people from the top 10% generally found the inequality fairer than the general population, except in India. “This could be because they’re trying to justify their larger carbon footprints,” said Debnath.

̽��ֱ��researchers say that more work is needed to determine the best ways to promote fairness and justice in climate action across countries, cultures and communities.

“Due to their greater financial and political influence, most climate policies reflect the interests of the richest in society and rarely involve fundamental changes to their lifestyles or social status,” said Debnath.

“Greater awareness and discussion of existing inequality in personal carbon footprints can help build political pressure to address these inequalities and develop climate solutions that work for all,” said Nielsen.

̽��ֱ��study also involved researchers from Justus-Liebig- ̽��ֱ�� Giessen, Murdoch ̽��ֱ�� and Oxford ̽��ֱ��. ̽��ֱ��research was supported in part by the Carlsberg Foundation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Quadrature Climate Foundation and the Swiss National Science Foundation.

Reference:
Kristian S Nielsen et al. ‘Underestimation of personal carbon footprint inequality in four diverse countries.’ Nature Climate Change (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41558-024-02130-y

̽��ֱ��personal carbon footprint of the richest people in society is grossly underestimated, both by the rich themselves and by those on middle and lower incomes, no matter which country they come from. At the same time, both the rich and the poor drastically overestimate the carbon footprint of the poorest people.

SolStock via Getty Images

A father and two sons running on a beach

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright © ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.

Yes

Electrified charcoal ‘sponge’ can soak up CO2 directly from the air

sc604 — Wed, 05 Jun 2024 15:00:10 +0000

Researchers from the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge used a method similar to charging a battery to instead charge activated charcoal, which is often used in household water filters.

By charging the charcoal ‘sponge’ with ions that form reversible bonds with CO2, the researchers found the charged material could successfully capture CO2 directly from the air.

̽��ֱ��charged charcoal sponge is also potentially more energy efficient than current carbon capture approaches, since it requires much lower temperatures to remove the captured CO2 so it can be stored. ̽��ֱ��results are reported in the journal Nature.

“Capturing carbon emissions from the atmosphere is a last resort, but given the scale of the climate emergency, it’s something we need to investigate,” said Dr Alexander Forse from the Yusuf Hamied Department of Chemistry, who led the research. “ ̽��ֱ��first and most urgent thing we’ve got to do is reduce carbon emissions worldwide, but greenhouse gas removal is also thought to be necessary to achieve net zero emissions and limit the worst effects of climate change. Realistically, we’ve got to do everything we can.”

Direct air capture, which uses sponge-like materials to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, is one potential approach for carbon capture, but current approaches are expensive, require high temperatures and the use of natural gas, and lack stability.

“Some promising work has been done on using porous materials for carbon capture from the atmosphere,” said Forse. “We wanted to see if activated charcoal might be an option, since it’s cheap, stable and made at scale.”

Activated charcoal is used in many purification applications, such as water filters, but normally it can’t capture and hold CO2 from the air. Forse and his colleagues proposed that if activated charcoal could be charged, like a battery, it could be a suitable material for carbon capture.

When charging a battery, charged ions are inserted into one of the battery’s electrodes. ̽��ֱ��researchers hypothesised that charging activated charcoal with chemical compounds called hydroxides would make it suitable for carbon capture, since hydroxides form reversible bonds with CO2.

̽��ֱ��team used a battery-like charging process to charge an inexpensive activated charcoal cloth with hydroxide ions. In this process, the cloth essentially acts like an electrode in a battery, and hydroxide ions accumulate in the tiny pores of the charcoal. At the end of the charging process, the charcoal is removed from the “battery”, washed and dried.

Tests of the charged charcoal sponge showed that it could successfully capture CO2 directly from the air, thanks to the bonding mechanism of the hydroxides.

“It’s a new way to make materials, using a battery-like process,” said Forse. “And the rates of CO2 capture are already comparable to incumbent materials. But what’s even more promising is this method could be far less energy-intensive, since we don’t require high temperatures to collect the CO2 and regenerate the charcoal sponge.”

To collect the CO2 from the charcoal so it can be purified and stored, the material is heated to reverse the hydroxide-CO2 bonds. In most materials currently used for CO2 capture from air, the materials need to be heated to temperatures as high as 900°C, often using natural gas. However, the charged charcoal sponges developed by the Cambridge team only require heating to 90-100°C, temperatures that can be achieved using renewable electricity. ̽��ֱ��materials are heated through resistive heating, which essentially heats them from the inside out, making the process faster and less energy-intensive.

̽��ֱ��materials do, however, have limitations that the researchers are now working on. “We are working now to increase the quantity of carbon dioxide that can be captured, and in particular under humid conditions where our performance decreases,” said Forse.

̽��ֱ��researchers say their approach could be useful in fields beyond carbon capture, since the pores in the charcoal and the ions inserted into them can be fine-tuned to capture a range of molecules.

“This approach was a kind of crazy idea we came up with during the Covid-19 lockdowns, so it’s always exciting when these ideas actually work,” said Forse. “This approach opens a door to making all kinds of materials for different applications, in a way that’s simple and energy-efficient.”

A patent has been filed and the research is being commercialised with the support of Cambridge Enterprise, the ̽��ֱ��’s commercialisation arm.

̽��ֱ��research was supported in part by the Leverhulme Trust, the Royal Society, the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), part of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), and the Centre for Climate Repair at Cambridge.

Reference:
Huaiguang Li et al. ‘Capturing carbon dioxide from air with charged sorbents.’ Nature (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-024-07449-2

Researchers have developed a low-cost, energy-efficient method for making materials that can capture carbon dioxide directly from the air.

̽��ֱ��first and most urgent thing we’ve got to do is reduce carbon emissions worldwide, but greenhouse gas removal is also thought to be necessary to achieve net zero emissions and limit the worst effects of climate change. Realistically, we’ve got to do everything we can

Alex Forse

Sample of activated charcoal used to capture carbon dioxide

Yes

Cement recycling method could help solve one of the world’s biggest climate challenges

sc604 — Wed, 22 May 2024 14:47:38 +0000

Researchers from the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge have developed a method to produce very low-emission concrete at scale – an innovation that could be transformative for the transition to net zero.

Carbon-omics and global health

plc32 — Fri, 17 Nov 2023 12:05:53 +0000

Cambridge Zero to host two research symposia to discuss critical climate change challenges

Offset markets: new approach could help save tropical forests by restoring faith in carbon credits

jg533 — Mon, 30 Oct 2023 16:15:05 +0000

A new approach to valuing the carbon storage potential of natural habitats aims to help restore faith in offset schemes, by enabling investors to directly compare carbon credit pricing across a wide range of projects.

Current valuation methods for forest conservation projects have come under heavy scrutiny, leading to a crisis of confidence in carbon markets. This is hampering efforts to offset unavoidable carbon footprints, mitigate climate change, and scale up urgently needed investment in tropical forest conservation.

Measuring the value of carbon storage is not easy. Recent research revealed that as little as 6% of carbon credits from voluntary REDD+ schemes result in preserved forests. And the length of time these forests are preserved is critical to the climate benefits achieved.

Now, a team led by scientists at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge has invented a more reliable and transparent way of estimating the benefit of carbon stored because of forest conservation.

̽��ֱ��method is published today in the journal Nature Climate Change. In it, the researchers argue that saving tropical forests is not only vital for biodiversity, but also a much less expensive way of balancing emissions than most of the current carbon capture and storage technologies.

̽��ֱ��new approach works a bit like a lease agreement: carbon credits are issued to tropical forest projects that store carbon for a predicted amount of time. ̽��ֱ��valuation is front-loaded, because more trees protected now means less carbon released to the atmosphere straight away.

̽��ֱ��technique involves deliberately pessimistic predictions of when stored carbon might be released, so that the number of credits issued is conservative. But because forests can now be monitored by remote sensing, if projects do better than predicted – which they usually will – they can be rewarded through the issue of further credits.

̽��ֱ��payments encourage local people to protect forests: the carbon finance they receive can help provide alternative livelihoods that don’t involve cutting down trees.

And by allowing for future payments, the new method generates incentives for safeguarding forests long after credits have been issued. This contrasts with the current approach, which passes on a burden for conservation to future generations without compensation for lost livelihoods.

̽��ֱ��approach also allows different types of conservation projects to be compared in a like-for-like manner.

“Until now there hasn’t been a satisfactory way of directly comparing technological solutions with nature-based solutions for carbon capture. This has caused a lack of enthusiasm for investing in carbon credits linked to tropical forest protection,” said Dr Tom Swinfield, a researcher in the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge’s Department of Zoology and senior author of the study.

He added: “Tropical forests are being cleared so quickly that if we don’t protect them now, we’re not going to make the vital progress we need towards net-zero. Buying carbon credits linked to their protection is one of the best ways to do this.”

Tropical forests play a key role in taking carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, helping to reduce global warming and avert climate catastrophe. But the carbon they capture is not taken out of the atmosphere permanently: forests can be destroyed by pests, floods, fire, wind – and by human clearance.

This impermanence, and therefore the difficulty of reliably measuring the long-term climate benefit of tropical forest protection, has made it an unattractive proposition for investors wanting to offset their carbon emissions.

And this is despite it being a far cheaper investment than more permanent, technology-based methods of carbon capture and storage.

Protection of tropical forests, a nature-based solution to climate change, comes with additional benefits: helping to conserve biodiversity, and supporting the livelihoods of people living near the forests.

“Nature-based carbon solutions are highly undervalued right now because the market doesn’t know how to account for the fact that forests aren’t a permanent carbon storage solution. Our method takes away a lot of the uncertainties,” said Anil Madhavapeddy, a Professor in the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge’s Department of Computer Science and Technology, who was involved in the study.

̽��ֱ��new method, developed by scientists at the Universities of Cambridge and Exeter and the London School of Economics, is called ‘Permanent Additional Carbon Tonne' (PACT) accounting, and can be used to value a wide range of nature-based solutions.

“Carbon finance is a way for us – the carbon emitters of the richer world – to direct funds towards rural communities in the tropics so they can get more out of the land they have, without cutting down more trees,” said Andrew Balmford, Professor of Conservation Science at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and first author of the paper.

Co-author Srinivasan Keshav, Robert Sansom Professor of Computer Science at Cambridge added: “Our new approach has the potential to address market concerns around nature-based solutions to carbon offsetting, and lead to desperately needed investment.”

Conversion of tropical forest to agricultural land results in vast carbon emissions. Around 30% of all progress towards the ambitious net-zero commitments made at COP26 is reliant on better management of carbon in nature.

Other carbon credit investment options include technologies that remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and lock it deep in the Earth for hundreds of years. These permanent storage options may currently be easier to value, say the researchers, but they typically cost substantially more than nature-based solutions and do nothing to protect natural habitats that are vital in regulating the global climate and mitigating the extinction crisis.

̽��ֱ��research was funded primarily by the Tezos Foundation. It was conducted by researchers at the Cambridge Centre for Carbon Credits.

Reference: Balmford, A et al.: ‘Realising the social value of impermanent carbon credits.’ Nature Climate Change, October 2023. DOI: 10.1038/s41558-023-01815-0

Millions of carbon credits are generated by overestimating forest preservation

fpjl2 — Fri, 25 Aug 2023 07:28:16 +0000

Study analyses major carbon offset projects, and finds that – of a potential 89 million credits – only 5.4 million (6%) were linked to additional carbon reductions through tree conservation.

Cambridge researchers help develop smart, 3D printed concrete wall for National Highways project

sc604 — Thu, 13 Jul 2023 12:01:02 +0000

̽��ֱ��3D-printed structure – a type of retaining wall known as a headwall – has been installed on the A30 in Cornwall, where it is providing real-time information thanks to Cambridge-designed sensors embedded in its structure. ̽��ֱ��sensors provide up-to-date measurements including temperature, strain and pressure. This ‘digital twin’ of the wall could help spot and correct faults before they occur.

Headwall structures are normally made in limited shapes from precast concrete, requiring formwork and extensive steel reinforcement. But by using 3D printing, the team – including specialists from Costain, Jacobs and Versarien – could design and construct a curved hollow wall with no formwork and no steel reinforcement. ̽��ֱ��wall gets its strength not from steel, but from geometry instead.

̽��ֱ��wall – which took one hour to print – is roughly two metres high and three and a half metres across. It was printed in Gloucestershire at the headquarters of the advanced engineering company Versarien, using a robot arm-based concrete printer. Making the wall using 3D printing significantly saves on costs, materials and carbon emissions.

Over the past six years, Professor Abir Al-Tabbaa’s team in the Department of Engineering has been developing new sensor technologies and exploring the effectiveness of existing commercial sensors to get better-quality information out of infrastructure. Her team has also developed various ‘smart’ self-healing concretes. For this project, they supplied sensors to measure temperature during the printing process.

Temperature variations at different layers of the 3D-printed wall were continuously monitored to detect any potential hotspots, thermal gradients, or anomalies. ̽��ֱ��temperature data will be correlated with the corresponding thermal imaging profile to understand the thermal behaviour of the 3D-printed wall.

“Since you need an extremely fast-setting cement for 3D printing, it also generates an enormous amount of heat,” said Al-Tabbaa. “We embedded our sensors in the wall to measure temperature during construction, and now we’re getting data from them while the wall is on site.”

In addition to temperature, the sensors measure relative humidity, pressure, strain, electrical resistivity, and electrochemical potential. ̽��ֱ��measurements provide valuable insights into the reliability, robustness, accuracy, and longevity of the sensors.

A LiDAR system also was used to scan the wall as it was being printed to create a 3D point cloud and generate a digital twin of the wall.

“Making the wall digital means it can speak for itself,” said Al-Tabbaa. “And we can use our sensors to understand these 3D printed structures better and accelerate their acceptance in industry.”

̽��ֱ��Cambridge team developed a type of sensor, known as a PZT (Piezoceramic Lead-Zirconate-Titanate) sensor, which measures electromechanical impedance response and monitors changes in these measurements over time to detect any possible damage. These smart sensors can show how 3D-printed mortar hardens over time, while simultaneously monitoring the host structure’s health.

Eight PZT sensors were embedded within the wall layers at different positions during the 3D printing process to capture the presence of loading and strain, both during the construction process and service life after field installation.

̽��ֱ��team, which included experts in smart materials, automation and robotics and data science, also developed a bespoke wireless data acquisition system. This enabled the collection of the multifrequency electromechanical response data of the embedded sensors remotely from Cambridge.

“This project will serve as a living laboratory, generating valuable data over its lifespan,” said Al-Tabbaa. “ ̽��ֱ��sensor data and ‘digital twin’ will help infrastructure professionals better understand how 3D printing can be used and tailored to print larger and more complex cement-based materials for the strategic road network.”

Members of the team included Dr Sripriya Rengaraju, Dr Christos Vlachakis, Dr Yen-Fang Su, Dr Damian Palin, Dr Hussam Taha, Dr Richard Anvo and Dr Lilia Potseluyko from Cambridge; as well as Costain’s Head of Materials Bhavika Ramrakhyani, a part-time PhD student in the Department of Engineering, and Ben Harries, Architectural Innovation Lead at Versarien, who is also starting a part-time PhD in the Department of Engineering in October.

̽��ֱ��Cambridge team’s work is part of the Resilient Materials for Life Programme and the Digital Roads of the Future Initiative. ̽��ֱ��research is supported in part by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), part of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), and the European Union.

Cambridge researchers, working in partnership with industry, have helped develop the first 3D-printed piece of concrete infrastructure to be used on a National Highways project.

Making the wall digital means it can speak for itself, and we can use our sensors to understand these 3D-printed structures better and accelerate their acceptance in industry

Abir Al-Tabbaa

Cool Concrete – the smart, 3D printed concrete wall used for National Highways project.

National Highways

3D printed retaining wall

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright © ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – as here, on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.

Yes

Carbon emissions from fertilisers could be reduced by as much as 80% by 2050

sc604 — Thu, 09 Feb 2023 15:48:50 +0000

̽��ֱ��researchers, from the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, found that two-thirds of emissions from fertilisers take place after they are spread on fields, with one-third of emissions coming from production processes.

Although nitrogen-based fertilisers are already known to be a major source of greenhouse gas emissions, this is the first time that their overall contribution, from production to deployment, has been fully quantified. Their analysis found that manure and synthetic fertilisers emit the equivalent of 2.6 gigatonnes of carbon per year – more than global aviation and shipping combined.

Carbon emissions from fertilisers urgently need to be reduced; however, this must be balanced against the need for global food security. Earlier research has estimated that 48% of the global population is fed with crops grown with synthetic fertilisers, and the world’s population is expected to grow by 20% by 2050.

̽��ֱ��Cambridge researchers say that a combination of scalable technological and policy solutions are needed to reduce fertiliser emissions while maintaining food security. However, they estimate that if such solutions could be implemented at scale, the emissions from manure and synthetic fertilisers could be reduced by as much as 80%, to one-fifth of current levels, without a loss of productivity. Their results are reported in the journal Nature Food.

“Incredibly, we don’t actually know how many chemicals we produce globally, where they end up, where and how they accumulate, how many emissions they produce, and how much waste they generate,” said co-author Dr André Cabrera Serrenho from Cambridge’s Department of Engineering.

Serrenho and his co-author Yunhu Gao undertook a project to accurately measure the total impacts of fertilisers, one of the two main products of the petrochemical industry. Of all the products made by the petrochemical industry, the vast majority – as much as 74% – are either plastics or fertilisers.

“In order to reduce emissions, it’s important for us to identify and prioritise any interventions we can make to make fertilisers less harmful to the environment,” said Serrenho. “But if we’re going to do that, we first need to have a clear picture of the whole lifecycle of these products. It sounds obvious, but we actually know very little about these things.”

̽��ֱ��researchers mapped the global flows of manure and synthetic fertilisers and their emissions for 2019, along all stages of the lifecycle, by reconciling the production and consumption of nitrogen fertilisers and regional emission factors across nine world regions.

After completing their analysis, the researchers found that unlike many other products, the majority of emissions for fertilisers occur not during production, but during their use.

“It was surprising that this was the major source of emissions,” said Serrenho. “But only after quantifying all emissions, at every point of the lifecycle, can we then start looking at different mitigation methods to reduce emissions without a loss of productivity.”

̽��ֱ��researchers listed and quantified the maximum theoretical impact of different mitigation methods – most of these are already known, but their maximum potential effect had not been quantified.

Emissions from the production of synthetic fertilisers are mostly from ammonia synthesis, partly due to chemical reactions used in the production process. ̽��ֱ��most effective mitigation at the production stage would be for the industry to decarbonise heating and hydrogen production. Additionally, fertilisers could be mixed with chemicals called nitrification inhibitors, which prevent bacteria from forming nitrous oxide. However, these chemicals are likely to make fertilisers more expensive.

“If we’re going to make fertilisers more expensive, then there needs to be some sort of financial incentive to farmers and to fertiliser companies,” said Serrenho. “Farming is an incredibly tough business as it is, and farmers aren’t currently rewarded for producing lower emissions.”

̽��ֱ��single most effective way to reduce fertiliser-associated emissions, however, would be to reduce the amount of fertilisers that we use. “We’re incredibly inefficient in our use of fertilisers,” said Serrenho. “We’re using far more than we need, which is economically inefficient and that’s down to farming practices. If we used fertiliser more efficiently, we would need substantially less fertiliser, which would reduce emissions without affecting crop productivity.”

̽��ֱ��researchers also looked at the mix of fertilisers used around the world, which varies by region. ̽��ֱ��researchers say that replacing some of the fertilisers with the highest emissions, such as urea, with ammonium nitrate worldwide could further reduce emissions by between 20% and 30%. However, this would only be beneficial after decarbonising the fertiliser industry.

“There are no perfect solutions,” said Serrenho. “We need to rethink how we produce food, and what sorts of economic incentives work best. Perhaps that means paying farmers to produce fewer emissions, perhaps that means paying more for food. We need to find the right mix of financial, technological and policy solutions to reduce emissions while keeping the world fed.”

Serrenho and Gao estimate that by implementing all the mitigations they analysed, emissions from the fertiliser sector could be reduced by as much as 80% by 2050.

“Our work gives us a good idea of what’s technically possible, what’s big, and where interventions would be meaningful – it’s important that we aim interventions at what matters the most, in order to make fast and meaningful progress in reducing emissions,” said Serrenho.

̽��ֱ��research was part of the C-THRU project, led by Professor Jonathan Cullen, where researchers from four UK and US Universities are working to bring clarity to the emissions from the global petrochemical supply chain.

Reference:
Yunhu Gao and André Cabrera Serrenho. ‘Greenhouse gas emissions from nitrogen fertilisers could be reduce by up to one-fifth of current levels by 2050 with combined interventions.’ Nature Food (2023). DOI: 10.1038/s43016-023-00698-w

Researchers have calculated the carbon footprint for the full life cycle of fertilisers, which are responsible for approximately five percent of total greenhouse gas emissions – the first time this has been accurately quantified – and found that carbon emissions could be reduced to one-fifth of current levels by 2050.

Our work gives us a good idea of what’s technically possible, and where interventions would be meaningful – it’s important that we aim interventions at what matters the most, in order to make fast and meaningful progress in reducing emissions

André Cabrera Serrenho

SteveAllenPhoto via Getty Images

Spraying fertiliser on wheat crop - North Yorkshire - England.

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright © ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – as here, on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.

Yes