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How Tech Is Helping The Agriculture Sector Curb Carbon Emissions
UN Deputy Secretary-General Amina J. Mohammed stated that 2018 was a record-breaking year for climate, but 2019 doesn’t look much better. As the list of extreme weather events and climate shocks grows, so does our shared responsibility to act
A worker harvests Image: REUTERS/Edgar Su at a vertical farm in Singapore.
26 Jul 2019
Alzbeta Klein Director and Global Head, Climate Business , International Finance Corporation (IFC)
UN Deputy Secretary-General Amina J. Mohammed stated that 2018 was a record-breaking year for climate, but 2019 doesn’t look much better. As the list of extreme weather events and climate shocks grows, so does our shared responsibility to act.
For the agricultural sector, these weather events are particularly devastating, with increased cycles of more frequent floods and drought hitting many farmers. The good news is that, two years ago in Bonn, the world’s governments finally acknowledged for the first time that agriculture has a major role to play in our changing climate. Following a series of intense all-night discussions and years of division and deadlock, governments at COP23 finally agreed on the connection between industrialized farming and our warming climate.
The world’s leading climate scientists have concluded that how we farm and use our land (whether for food production, forestry, or other types of land use) is responsible for about one-quarter of global greenhouse gas emissions. If we include emissions caused by the processing, transport, storage, cooling and disposal of the food that we consume, then that figure rises to more than 40% – an unthinkable price for how we farm and eat.
With the global population set to rise from 7.3 billion to 9.7 billion between now and 2050, world governments are faced with an overwhelming dilemma: how to feed the future without putting irreparable strain on our planet’s already overburdened soils and oceans? I believe that technology can get us there.
Agricultural technology – or agtech – approaches like precision farming, drought- and pest-resistant seeds, mobile phones and digital technology platforms are a solution. They boost farmers’ profits by cutting costs and increasing yields and benefiting customers the world over. But more technological innovation is needed. Fortunately, some of the International Finance Corporation’s partners are at the forefront of innovation when it comes to agtech.
Take Planet Labs, an innovative geospatial start-up that uses 149 earth-observing satellites to generate a daily stream of high-resolution images of the earth’s surface for farmers to understand crop and soil changes from pre-season to harvest.
Planet Lab’s goal is to take images of the Earth’s entire surface every day to make climate change visible, accessible and actionable, according to Tara O’Shea, Planet’s director of forestry. Founded in 2010 by three former NASA scientists, the company visualizes daily changes across the Earth’s surface in real time. Until now, satellite imagery data was not frequent enough to react to crop stress in a timely manner. Planet’s daily imagery has been a game changer in the digital ag space – enabling farmers to manage their precision agriculture at scale and farm more efficiently, profitably, and sustainably.
Agriculture isn’t just a rural concern. As urban density increases around the world, and more and more people move to cities, locally sourced food is taking on greater importance. Crop One Holdings is a “vertical farming" company that is transforming the landscape of indoor farming in urban areas.
The term vertical farm is relatively new. It refers to a method of growing crops – in Crop One Holding’s case, leafy greens and lettuce – usually without soil or natural light, in beds stacked vertically inside a controlled-environment building. One of the company’s 320 sq ft units can substitute up to 19 acres of farmland and use 1/2500th of the water usage of field-based growing. In Boston, a Crop One Holding one-acre farm produces yields equivalent to that of a regular 400-acre farm.
Crop One drastically reduces the length of transportation as well as carbon use, due to the farms’ proximity to consumers. There is no soil used in the growing, nor any chemical intervention or pesticides. Competitive field products are usually 12 to 15 days old by the time they are delivered to a store, resulting in significant losses for the retailer.
Vertical farms that rise to the challenge of climate change are still in the early stages of development, but a recent $40 million joint venture between Crop One and Emirates Flight Catering to build the world’s largest vertical farming facility in Dubai suggests that agtech business models are showing potential to scale across markets.
That’s good news for my climate business team at IFC, who are helping existing and potential agribusiness clients acquire and leverage new agricultural technologies for both large scale and smallholder farms. Our “climate-smart” approach targets animal protein, land and crops, and food losses, yielding $1.3 billion in investments since 2017. Agtech can accelerate these investments and help farmers adopt more sustainable agronomic practices.
At this year’s One Planet Summit, IFC signed two agreements with the Kenya Tea Development Agency Power Company Ltd. (KTDA Power): one that enables carbon credits, and another that will support KTDA with various advisory activities such as financial literacy training for farmers, soil testing for productivity improvement and development of a wood-sourcing strategy.
How we farm matters. In addition to record-breaking temperatures, super typhoons and drought, Deputy Secretary-General Mohammed has also spoken about how 5G technology and AI can build smarter agricultural systems.
Feeding our growing population requires revolutionary transformations in farming and land cultivation. Adopting pioneering agricultural technologies with the potential to increase yields while limiting greenhouse gas emissions is an essential step. If agriculture is to continue to feed the world, then we must enable technology to shape the farms of the future.
Fossil Fuel Emissions Climb For 2nd Straight Year
Global fossil fuel emissions are on track to rise for a second year in a row, primarily due to growing energy use, a new study warns.
DECEMBER 6TH, 2018POSTED BY JOSIE GARTHWAITE-STANFORD
Global fossil fuel emissions are on track to rise for a second year in a row, primarily due to growing energy use, a new study warns.
The projections come in a week when international negotiators are gathering in the coal-mining city of Katowice, Poland, to work out the rules for implementing the Paris climate agreement. Under the 2015 accord, hundreds of nations pledged to cut carbon emissions and keep global warming “well below” 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial temperatures.
“We thought, perhaps hoped, emissions had peaked a few years ago,” says Rob Jackson, a professor of Earth system science at Stanford University’s School of Earth, Energy & Environmental Sciences. “After two years of renewed growth, that was wishful thinking.”
Researchers estimate global carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel sources, which represent roughly 90 percent of all emissions from human activities, will reach a record high of just over 37 billion tons in 2018, an increase of 2.7 percent over emissions output in 2017.
That compares to 1.6 percent growth a year earlier. Emissions from non-fossil sources, such as deforestation, are projected to add nearly 4.5 billion tons of carbon emissions to the 2018 total.
“Global energy demand is outpacing powerful growth in renewables and energy efficiency,” Jackson says. “The clock is ticking in our struggle to keep warming below 2 degrees.”
BLAME THE WEATHER (AND BIGGER CARS)
In the United States, emissions of carbon dioxide are projected to increase 2.5 percent in 2018 after a decade of declines. Culprits for the increase include unusual weather—a cold winter in Eastern states and a warm summer across much of the nation ramped up energy needs for seasonal heating and cooling—as well as a growing appetite for oil in the face of low gas prices.
“We’re driving more miles in bigger cars, changes that are outpacing improvements in vehicle fuel efficiency,” Jackson says. Overall, US oil use is on track to rise by more than 1 percent this year compared to 2017.
Consumption of one fossil fuel, however, is no longer on the rise: coal. The study shows coal consumption in Canada and the United States has dropped by 40 percent since 2005, and in 2018 alone the US is expected to take a record-setting 15 gigawatts of coal-fired capacity offline.
“Market forces and the drive for cleaner air are pushing countries toward natural gas, wind, and solar power,” Jackson says. “This change will not only reduce CO2 emissions but will also save lives lost to air pollution.”
OIL & NATURAL GAS
Yet the study shows renewables around the world are largely coming online as add-ons to fossil fuel energy sources—particularly natural gas—rather than replacements. “It isn’t enough for renewables to grow,” Jackson says. “They need to displace fossil fuels. So far, that’s happening for coal but not for oil or natural gas.”
The researchers warn that over time, increased coal use in regions where large swaths of the population lack access to reliable electricity could eventually exceed the steep cuts to coal use elsewhere.
India’s emissions, for example, are projected to grow 6 percent this year as the country races to build new power plants for both industrial and consumer needs. “They’re building everything—wind, solar, nuclear, and coal—very quickly,” Jackson says.
Energy demand is rising around the world. “It’s the first time in a decade that the economies of essentially all countries are growing,” Jackson says.
CHANGE IN CHINA
The biggest change in carbon emissions this year compared to 2017 is a substantial uptick in both energy consumption and emissions in China, according to the study. After four years of stable emissions amid pressure to improve air quality, the country has now hit the accelerator.
Global economic growth has increased demand for iron, steel, aluminum, and cement manufactured in China. Meanwhile, a recent slowdown in China’s own economy prompted the country to shift its approach to energy development.
“China is jump-starting coal projects that were on hold,” Jackson says. As a result, the country’s emissions are expected to rise 5 percent in 2018, up from an increase of roughly 3.5 percent the previous year.
In some ways, this year’s estimates mark a return to an old pattern, in which economies and emissions rise more or less in sync. Yet recent history suggests the two can be decoupled. From 2014 through 2016, emissions held fairly steady despite growth in global gross domestic product, thanks in large part to reduced coal use in the US and China, improved energy efficiency, and an expansion of renewable energy around the world.
“We can have economic growth with fewer emissions,” says lead author Corinne Le Quéré, a climate scientist at the University of East Anglia. “There’s no question about that.”
Over the past decade, at least 19 countries, including Denmark, Switzerland, and the United States, reduced carbon dioxide emissions from fossil sources while their economies grew.
In 2019, barring a global economic downturn, the researchers anticipate carbon dioxide emissions will rise further despite urgency to reverse course. “We need emissions to stabilize and quickly trend toward the zero line,” Jackson says.
The study appears in Environmental Research Letters and in Earth System Science Data.
Additional coauthors are from Stanford; the University of East Anglia; the Center for International Climate Research in Oslo, Norway; the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) in Canberra, Australia; and Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l’Environment in Gif-sur-Yvette, France.
Stanford University, Future Earth, the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, the Australian Government’s National Environmental Science Programme’s Earth Systems and Climate Change Hub, and the European Commission Horizon 2020 project VERIFY funded the work.
Source: Stanford University
Original Study DOI: 10.5194/essd-10-2141-2018