Desert ‘carbon Farming’ To Curb CO2

Desert ‘carbon farming’ to suppress CO2

1 August 2013

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By Matt McGrath

Environment reporter, BBC News

Scientists state that planting large numbers of jatropha trees in desert locations might be an efficient method of suppressing emissions of CO2.

Dubbed “carbon farming”, researchers say the concept is economically competitive with modern carbon capture and storage tasks.

But critics say the idea could be have unexpected, negative impacts food rates.

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

Seeds of change

Jatropha curcas is a plant that stemmed in Central America and is extremely well adapted to extreme conditions including 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 study, German researchers revealed that a person hectare of jatropha could catch approximately 25 tonnes of co2 from the environment every year. The researchers based their price quotes on trees presently growing in trial plots in Egypt and in the Negev desert.

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

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

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

The scientists state that a vital component of the strategy would be the availability of desalination centers. This suggests that initially, any plantations would be confined to seaside locations.

They are wanting to develop larger trials in desert areas of Oman or Qatar. Prof Becker states that unlike other schemes that just offset the carbon that people produce, the planting of jatropha might be an excellent, short term option to environment change.

“I believe it is an excellent concept because we are actually extracting carbon dioxide from the environment – and it is completely various in between extracting and preventing.”

According to the researcher’s computations the expenses 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 techniques, such as the more high tech carbon capture and storage, external (CCS).

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

Growing jatropha not just takes in CO2 but has other advantages. The plants would assist to make desert locations more habitable, and the plant’s seeds can be gathered for biofuel state the researchers, supplying an economic return.

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

But other experts in this area are not persuaded. They indicate the fact 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 effective in coping with dry conditions.

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

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

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

She explained that jatropha is extremely toxic and can pollute 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 go in and grow these massive plantations to deal with a problem these individuals didn’t actually cause?”

Follow Matt on Twitter, external.

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Related web links

Universität Hohenheim

European Geosciences Union

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