http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/gcbb.12235/abstract
Opinion Economic and ecological views on climate change mitigation with bioenergy and negative emissions Felix Creutzig 22 DEC 2014 DOI: 10.1111/gcbb.12235 Keywords: BECCS;bioenergy;biophysical limits;climate change;life cycle emissions;risks;yields Abstract Climate stabilization scenarios emphasize the importance of land-based mitigation to achieve ambitious mitigation goals. The stabilization scenarios informing the recent IPCC's Fifth Assessment Report suggest that bioenergy could contribute anywhere between 10 and 245 EJ to climate change mitigation in 2100. High deployment of bioenergy with low life cycle GHG emissions would enable ambitious climate stabilization futures and reduce demands on other sectors and options. Bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) would even enable so-called negative emissions, possibly in the order of magnitude of 50% of today's annual gross emissions. Here, I discuss key assumptions that differ between economic and ecological perspectives. I find that high future yield assumptions, plausible in stabilization scenarios, look less realistic when evaluated in biophysical metrics. Yield assumptions also determine the magnitude of counterfactual land carbon stock development and partially determine the potential of BECCS. High fertilizer input required for high yields would likely hasten ecosystem degradation. I conclude that land-based mitigation strategies remain highly speculative; a constant iteration between synoptic integrated assessment models and more particularistic and fine-grained approaches is a crucial precondition for capturing complex dynamics and biophysical constraints that are essential for comprehensive assessments. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "geoengineering" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/geoengineering. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
