Negative Emission Technologies and the food-energy-water-neXus (NETX)

If CO2 emissions continue to rise, climate change will adversely affect global food and water availability, ecosystems, cities, and coastal communities. While reduction of fossil fuels will be an essential step for reducing atmospheric CO2, Negative Emission Technologies (NETs) can help meet emission targets. During combustion, CO2 can be extracted, transported, and stored in geologic repositories - this is the process of Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS). Combining bioenergy with CCS (BECCS) could result in negative emissions of CO2. BECCS is attractive since it results in a net removal of CO2 from the atmosphere while also providing a renewable source of energy. However, BECCS requires a large commitment of land and will have impacts on food and water availability. This work focuses on BECCS and addresses the challenges for planning a global and nationwide distribution of bioenergy crops.

The vast majority of IPCC scenarios that remain below 2 degrees C makes use of NET in the 21st century. Although bioenergy crops and BECCS are an essential component of the scenarios (produced by Integrated Assessment Models, or IAMs), the crops in even the most sophisticated IAMs only respond to mean changes in climate. This results in an inconsistency in the modelling framework: the IAMs can assume bioenergy crops are effective at drawing down CO2 and producing energy in a region where actually climate change will reduce their effectiveness. Earth System Models (ESMs) represent the dynamics of the atmosphere, oceans, sea ice, and land surface. They can account for biophysical (i.e. changes to albedo and latent heat fluxes) and biogeochemical (i.e. uptake or release of greenhouse gases) feedbacks due to land use change. They are the only tool available to investigate future impacts of spatial and temporal variability in climate on the food, energy, and water nexus. However, the ESMs used in the last IPCC report only accounted for a generic crop type at best, not differentiating between bioenergy and food crops. Without an explicit representation of bioenergy crops in ESMs, the effects of climate change do not feedback to affect the food, energy, and water resources assumed to be true in the IAMs. There is an urgent need for predicting the productivity of bioenergy crops in a coupled climate simulation, to see the impact of a range of climate change on the productivity, and associated impacts on food crop productivity, energy production, and water availability.

In this project, I will include representations of first and second generation bioenergy crops in the UK ESM, and investigate the impacts of climate change on the productivity at the global and regional (for the UK) level. This work will assess the viability of negative emissions of CO2 through bioenergy crops as an effective climate mitigation strategy under a changing climate, and provide data to support decisions that will minimize the impacts of both climate change and climate change mitigation on bioenergy production, food, and water availability. The outcomes of this project will enhance the resilience of the food/water/energy nexus to climate change and climate variability through better planning, and providing socially responsible recommendations for balancing the challenges of reducing climate change with feeding our growing global population.

The UK has committed to producing 15% of its energy from renewable sources by 2020, and aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 80% by 2050. This project will provide essential information for determining the role of bioenergy and negative emissions in achieving these targets, therefore increasing the effectiveness of energy provision for the UK and its climate mitigation strategy. Outcomes from the work are also relevant for the planning of a global implementation of BECCS, which is essential for this technology to be effective at mitigating climate change and avoiding unintended consequences. It is essential for this work to happen now, as delayed action will make dangerous climate change unavoidable.

The research of this fellowship will benefit other researchers in the field of climate change impacts and bioenergy, policy makers and planners of UK energy investments, students, and the general public. The outcomes of the work will be disseminated through publications in scientific journals, presentations at academic and industry conferences, academic lectures, outreach events at secondary schools, and a mini-conference held at the end of the Fellowship. I will harness in full media opportunities, including television, radio, newspapers, alongside emerging methods such as blogs and social media.

A short conference will follow the CMIP6 science workshop aimed at communicating the science enabled by this fellowship to key stakeholders such as regional governments officials and infrastructure planners in the UK. The high-resolution simulations for the UK will particularly benefit UK policy makers. The global simulations can be used to identify the distribution of bioenergy crops that will optimise negative emission potential with the minimal impact on food and water availability. The maps of potential energy production will be useful for a variety of applications, such as: planning economically advantageous locations for bioenergy crops, planning conversion of dedicated coal firing plants to co-firing plants, planning future dedicated biomass power stations, calculating emissions associated with transporting biomass, and planning an infrastructure to support BECCS.

The work will contribute to the development of a world-leading Earth System Model (ESM) and complements other UK-funded research in the bioenergy sector. The UKESM is based off the HadGEM2 ESM, which has been widely used in the international research community. The developments included in this proposal will keep the UKESM at the cutting edge of climate science. Moreover, the proposed work will use the UKESM in an interdisciplinary manner, bringing a social and engineering dimension to the forefront of the climate change dilemma.

The work addresses the EPSRC research areas of the Water/Energy/Food nexus and Forecasting Environmental Change, and there are opportunities for synergy with other EPSRC funded research in the bioenergy theme (for example, WEFWEBs at the University of Glasgow, and MAGLUE at the University of Southampton, both of which are funded through EPSRC). The novelty of this Fellowship is the implementation of current knowledge on bioenergy crops into an ESM, where their impacts can be studied in the interactive climate system. The hosted workshops and associated seminars will encourage intra- and inter-disciplinary discussion necessary to move this field forward.
Throughout the fellowship, I will provide clear information for non-academics on the potential impacts of climate change and decisions on renewable energy and NETs on the food-water-energy nexus through a website and blog, and through outreach events at schools, making use of the number of outreach and community engagement events sponsored within the UoE College of Engineering, Mathematics, and Physical Sciences. A potential hurdle in mitigating climate change with BECCS is public perception of the process, therefore these outreach activities can provide substantial benefit.