Negative emissions at negative cost-an opportunity for a scalable niche

Negative emissions at negative cost-an opportunity for a scalable niche

Aravind, P.V. (TU Delft Energy Technology; Rijksuniversiteit Groningen)
Champatan, Vipin (APJ Abdul Kalam Technological University, Kerala, India)
Gopi, Girigan (MS Swaminathan Research Foundation)
Vijay, V. (TU Delft Sanitary Engineering; Sardar Swaran Singh National Institute of Bio-Energy (SSS-NIBE))
Pande, S. (TU Delft Water Resources)
van den Broeke, L.J.P. (TU Delft Engineering Thermodynamics)
Shreedhar, S. (TU Delft Sanitary Engineering)
Nandakishor, T. M. (KTH Royal Institute of Technology; University of the Federal Armed Forces Munich)
Lindeboom, R.E.F. (TU Delft Sanitary Engineering)
Posada Duque, J.A. (TU Delft BT/Biotechnology and Society)

2022

In the face of the rapidly dwindling carbon budgets, negative emission technologies are widely suggested as required to stabilize the Earth’s climate. However, finding cost-effective, socially acceptable, and politically achievable means to enable such technologies remains a challenge. We propose solutions based on negative emission technologies to facilitate wealth creation for the stakeholders while helping to mitigate climate change. This paper comes up with suggestions and guidelines on significantly increasing carbon sequestration in coffee farms. A coffee and jackfruit agroforestry-based case study is presented along with an array of technical interventions, having a special focus on bioenergy and biochar, potentially leading to “negative emissions at negative cost.” The strategies for integrating food production with soil and water management, fuel production, adoption of renewable energy systems and timber management are outlined. The emphasis is on combining biological and engineering sciences to devise a practically viable niche that is easy to adopt, adapt and scale up for the communities and regions to achieve net negative emissions. The concerns expressed in the recent literature on the implementation of emission reduction and negative emission technologies are briefly presented. The novel opportunities to alleviate these concerns arising from our proposed interventions are then pointed out. Our analysis indicates that 1 ha coffee jackfruit-based agroforestry can additionally sequester around 10 tonnes of CO2-eq and lead to an income enhancement of up to 3,000–4,000 Euros in comparison to unshaded coffee. Finally, the global outlook for an easily adoptable nature-based approach is presented, suggesting an opportunity to implement revenue-generating negative emission technologies on a gigatonne scale. We anticipate that our approach presented in the paper results in increased attention to the development of practically viable science and technology-based interventions in order to support the speeding up of climate change mitigation efforts.

climate–change
negative emission technologies
biochar
agroforesry systems
carbon sequeatration
sustainable agriculture
bioenergy

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:98472770-57af-4862-9422-37361a121298

https://doi.org/10.3389/fenrg.2022.806435

2296-598X

Frontiers in Energy Research, 10

Institutional Repository

journal article

© 2022 P.V. Aravind, Vipin Champatan, Girigan Gopi, V. Vijay, S. Pande, L.J.P. van den Broeke, S. Shreedhar, T. M. Nandakishor, R.E.F. Lindeboom, J.A. Posada Duque, More Authors