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 correspondent, BBC News

Scientists state that planting great deals of jatropha trees in desert areas might be a reliable method of suppressing emissions of CO2.

Dubbed “carbon farming”, scientists state the concept is financially competitive with modern carbon capture and storage jobs.

But critics say the concept might be have unpredicted, unfavorable impacts consisting of driving up food rates.

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

Seeds of modification

Jatropha curcas is a plant that came from in Central America and is extremely well adjusted to extreme conditions consisting of extremely arid deserts.

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

In this research study, German scientists revealed that one hectare of jatropha could catch approximately 25 tonnes of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere every year. The scientists based their quotes on trees currently growing in trial plots in Egypt and in the Negev desert.

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

“There was good development, a good response from these plants. I feel there will be no issue attempting it on a much bigger scale, for example 10 thousand hectares in the beginning,” he said.

According to the researchers a plantation that would cover three percent of the Arabian desert would take in all the CO2 produced by cars and trucks in Germany over a twenty years period.

The researchers state that an important element of the strategy would be the schedule of desalination facilities. This suggests that initially, any plantations would be confined to coastal locations.

They are intending to develop bigger trials in desert locations of Oman or Qatar. Prof Becker says that unlike other schemes that just balance out the carbon that people produce, the planting of jatropha might be a good, brief term service to climate modification.

“I believe it is an excellent idea because we are really drawing out co2 from the atmosphere – and it is entirely various between extracting and preventing.”

According to the researcher’s computations the costs of curbing co2 via the planting of trees would be 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 number of nations are currently trialling this innovation, external however it has yet to be deployed commercially.

Growing jatropha not just absorbs CO2 however has other . The plants would help to make desert areas more habitable, and the plant’s seeds can be gathered for biofuel state the researchers, providing an economic return.

“Jatropha is ideal to be developed into biokerosene – it is even much better than biodiesel,” said Prof Becker.

But other experts in this area are not encouraged. They point to the reality that in 2007 and 2008 great deals of jatropha trees were planted for biofuel, particularly in Africa. But a lot of these endeavors ended in tears,, external as the plants were not very effective in handling dry conditions.

Lucy Hurn is the biofuels project manager for the charity, Actionaid. She states that while jatropha was as soon as viewed as the excellent, green hope the truth was extremely different.

“When jatropha was presented it was viewed as a miracle crop, it would grow on scrubland or marginal land,” she said.

“But there are often individuals who need limited land to graze their animals, they are getting food from that location – we wouldn’t class the land as limited.”

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

“It is still someone else’s land. Why enter and grow these massive plantations to deal with an issue these individuals didn’t in fact trigger?”

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 ‘illogical strategy’

Published

15 April 2013

Related internet links

Universität Hohenheim

European Geosciences Union

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