Desert ‘carbon Farming’ To Curb CO2
Desert ‘carbon farming’ to curb CO2
1 August 2013
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By Matt McGrath
Environment correspondent, BBC News
Scientists state that planting great deals of jatropha trees in desert areas could be a reliable method of curbing emissions of CO2.
Dubbed “carbon farming”, researchers state the concept is financially competitive with state-of-the-art carbon capture and storage jobs.
But critics say the concept might be have unanticipated, unfavorable impacts consisting of increasing food prices.
The research has actually been released, external in the journal Earth System Dynamics.
Seeds of change
Jatropha curcas is a plant that came from in Central America and is extremely well adapted to severe conditions including exceptionally dry deserts.
It is currently grown as a biofuel, external in some parts of the world since its seeds can produce oil.
In this study, German researchers showed that a person hectare of jatropha could record approximately 25 tonnes of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere every year. The scientists based their price quotes on trees currently growing in trial plots in Egypt and in the Negev desert.
“The results are overwhelming,” said Prof Klaus Becker, from the University of Hohenheim in Stuttgart.
“There was great 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 beginning,” he said.
According to the scientists a plantation that would cover 3 percent of the Arabian desert would soak up all the CO2 produced by cars and trucks in Germany over a twenty years duration.
The researchers say that a critical element of the plan would be the accessibility of desalination centers. This means that at first, any plantations would be confined to coastal locations.
They are wanting to develop bigger trials in desert locations of Oman or Qatar. Prof Becker says that unlike other schemes that the carbon that people produce, the planting of jatropha could be an excellent, short-term option to environment change.
“I believe it is an excellent concept due to the fact that we are actually drawing out carbon dioxide from the atmosphere – and it is completely different between extracting and preventing.”
According to the researcher’s estimations the costs of suppressing carbon dioxide through the planting of trees would be in between 42 and 63 euros per tonne. This makes it competitive with other methods, such as the more high tech carbon capture and storage, external (CCS).
A number of countries are currently trialling this technology, external however it has yet to be deployed commercially.
Growing jatropha not only soaks up CO2 but has other benefits. The plants would assist to make desert locations more habitable, and the plant’s seeds can be collected for biofuel state the researchers, providing an economic return.
“Jatropha is ideal to be turned into biokerosene – it is even better than biodiesel,” said Prof Becker.
But other experts in this location are not convinced. They indicate the fact that in 2007 and 2008 big numbers of jatropha trees were planted for biofuel, especially in Africa. But a number of these endeavors ended in tears,, external as the plants were not extremely effective in coping with dry conditions.
Lucy Hurn is the biofuels campaign manager for the charity, Actionaid. She says that while jatropha was when viewed as the great, green hope the truth was extremely different.
“When jatropha was introduced it was viewed as a miracle crop, it would grow on scrubland or limited land,” she said.
“But there are typically individuals who require minimal land to graze their animals, they are getting food from that location – we would not class the land as minimal.”
She explained that jatropha is extremely harmful and can contaminate the land it is grown on, even in a desert. And she also had issues about the fairness of the concept.
“It is still someone else’s land. Why go in and grow these massive plantations to deal with an issue these people didn’t really trigger?”
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Related internet links
Universität Hohenheim
European Geosciences Union
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