Desert ‘carbon Farming’ To Curb CO2

Desert ‘carbon farming’ to suppress CO2

1 August 2013

Share

close panel

Share page

Copy link

About sharing

By Matt McGrath

Environment reporter, BBC News

Scientists say that planting great deals of jatropha trees in desert locations might be a reliable method of curbing emissions of CO2.

Dubbed “carbon farming”, scientists say the idea is financially competitive with high-tech carbon capture and storage projects.

But critics state the concept might be have unforeseen, negative effects consisting of increasing food prices.

The research study has been published, external in the journal Earth System Dynamics.

Seeds of change

Jatropha curcas is a plant that came from Central America and is really well adapted to extreme conditions consisting of exceptionally arid deserts.

It is already grown as a biofuel, external in some parts of the world since its seeds can produce oil.

In this study, German scientists showed that one hectare of jatropha might record approximately 25 tonnes of carbon dioxide from the environment every year. The researchers based their estimates on trees presently growing in trial plots in Egypt and in the Negev desert.

“The outcomes are overwhelming,” said Prof Klaus Becker, from the University of Hohenheim in Stuttgart.

“There was excellent growth, a good reaction from these plants. I feel there will be no issue attempting it on a much larger scale, for instance 10 thousand hectares in the start,” he said.

According to the researchers a plantation that would cover 3 percent of the Arabian desert would take in all the CO2 produced by vehicles and trucks in Germany over a 20 year period.

The scientists say that a of the plan would be the schedule of desalination facilities. This indicates that initially, any plantations would be confined to seaside locations.

They are intending to establish larger trials in desert locations of Oman or Qatar. Prof Becker states that unlike other plans that simply balance out the carbon that people produce, the planting of jatropha might be an excellent, brief term solution to environment change.

“I believe it is a great concept since we are really extracting carbon dioxide from the atmosphere – and it is completely various in between drawing out and avoiding.”

According to the scientist’s calculations the costs of curbing co2 through the planting of trees would be in between 42 and 63 euros per tonne. This makes it competitive with other strategies, such as the more high tech carbon capture and storage, external (CCS).

A variety of countries are presently trialling this technology, external but it has yet to be deployed commercially.

Growing jatropha not just takes in CO2 however has other advantages. The plants would help to make desert areas more habitable, and the plant’s seeds can be gathered for biofuel state the scientists, supplying a financial return.

“Jatropha is perfect to be developed into biokerosene – it is even better than biodiesel,” stated Prof Becker.

But other specialists in this location are not persuaded. They indicate the truth that in 2007 and 2008 big numbers of jatropha trees were planted for biofuel, especially in Africa. But a lot of these ventures ended in tears,, external as the plants were not extremely successful in handling dry conditions.

Lucy Hurn is the biofuels campaign manager for the charity, Actionaid. She says that while jatropha was once viewed as the great, green hope the reality was really various.

“When jatropha was presented it was viewed as a wonder crop, it would grow on scrubland or minimal land,” she stated.

“But there are typically people who require marginal land to graze their animals, they are getting food from that area – we wouldn’t class the land as minimal.”

She mentioned that jatropha is highly harmful and can contaminate the land it is grown on, even in a desert. And she also had concerns about the fairness of the concept.

“It is still someone else’s land. Why enter and grow these enormous plantations to deal with a problem these individuals didn’t actually cause?”

Follow Matt on Twitter, external.

More on this story

‘Carpets of seaweed’ grown for fuel. Video, 00:03:05’Carpets of seaweed’ grown for fuel

1 July 2013

Biofuels are ‘unreasonable method’

Published

15 April 2013

Related internet links

Universität Hohenheim

European Geosciences Union

The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites.