Designing climate change mitigation plans that add up.

Mitigation plans to combat climate change depend on the combined implementation of many abatement options, but the options interact. Published anthropogenic emissions inventories are disaggregated by gas, sector, country, or final energy form. This allows the assessment of novel energy supply options, but is insufficient for understanding how options for efficiency and demand reduction interact. A consistent framework for understanding the drivers of emissions is therefore developed, with a set of seven complete inventories reflecting all technical options for mitigation connected through lossless allocation matrices. The required data set is compiled and calculated from a wide range of industry, government, and academic reports. The framework is used to create a global Sankey diagram to relate human demand for services to anthropogenic emissions. The application of this framework is demonstrated through a prediction of per-capita emissions based on service demand in different countries, and through an example showing how the "technical potentials" of a set of separate mitigation options should be combined

Rebound effects could offset more than half of avoided food loss and waste

Acknowledgements We thank Peter Newton, Sebastian Dueñas-Ocampo, Rayna Benzeev, Lee Frankel-Goldwater, Waverly Eichhorst, Ryan Langendorf, and Hilary Brumberg for their feedback on earlier drafts of this document; and Ryan Langendorf for helpful feedback and discussion on the economic analysis. M.H. and M.G.B. acknowledge funding from the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) (Award number: 2020-38420-30727), and the University of Colorado Boulder Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) (start-up grant to M.G.B.). S.J.D. was supported by the US National Science Foundation and US Department of Agriculture (INFEWS grant EAR 1639318) and by the ClimateWorks Foundation (grant 22-2100). .Peer reviewedPostprin

The Positive Feedback Loop between the Impacts of Climate Change and Agricultural Expansion and Relocation

Climate change and agriculture influence each other. The effects of climate change on agriculture seem to be predominantly negative, although studies show a large variation in impacts between crops and regions. To compensate for these effects, agriculture can either intensify or expand in area; both of these options increase greenhouse gas emissions. It is therefore likely that such negative effects will increase agriculture’s contribution to climate change, making this feedback a positive, self-reinforcing one. We have previously used a data-driven model to examine greenhouse gas emissions in 2050 related to agricultural scenarios of increasing demand for food. Here, we extend this approach by introducing the impacts of climate change on agricultural yields. We estimate the additional losses of natural habitats and increases in greenhouse gas emissions resulting from agricultural expansion and relocation induced by the negative effects of climate change. We studied two climate change scenarios and different assumptions about trade. These additional impacts caused by climate change are found to be relatively moderate compared to demand-driven impact, but still significant. They increase greenhouse gas emissions from land use change by an additional 8%–13%. Climate change tends to aggravate the effects of demand drivers in critical regions. Current emission scenarios are underestimates in that they do not include these feedback effects

Greedy or Needy? Land use and climate impacts of food production in 2050 under different potential livestock futures

Our thanks to the Future Agriculture initiative at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU) for funding the development of the model used to perform the calculations. The input of PS contributes to the Belmont Forum/FACCE-JPI-funded DEVIL project (NE/M021327/1).Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Designing Climate Change Mitigation Plans That Add Up

[Image: see text] Mitigation plans to combat climate change depend on the combined implementation of many abatement options, but the options interact. Published anthropogenic emissions inventories are disaggregated by gas, sector, country, or final energy form. This allows the assessment of novel energy supply options, but is insufficient for understanding how options for efficiency and demand reduction interact. A consistent framework for understanding the drivers of emissions is therefore developed, with a set of seven complete inventories reflecting all technical options for mitigation connected through lossless allocation matrices. The required data set is compiled and calculated from a wide range of industry, government, and academic reports. The framework is used to create a global Sankey diagram to relate human demand for services to anthropogenic emissions. The application of this framework is demonstrated through a prediction of per-capita emissions based on service demand in different countries, and through an example showing how the “technical potentials” of a set of separate mitigation options should be combined