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Energy intensities and greenhouse gas emission mitigation in global agriculture

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Abstract

Energy efficiency and greenhouse gas emissions are closely linked. This paper reviews agricultural options to reduce energy intensities and their impacts, discusses important accounting issues related to system boundaries, land scarcity, and measurement units and compares agricultural energy intensities and improvement potentials on an international level. Agricultural development in recent decades, while increasing yields, has led to lower average energy efficiencies when comparing the 1960s and the mid 1980s. In the two decades thereafter, energy intensities in developed countries increased, but with little impact on greenhouse gas emissions. Efficiency differences across countries in the year 2000 suggest a maximum improvement potential of 500 million tons of CO2 annually. If only below average countries would increase their energy efficiency to average levels of the year 2000, the resulting emission reductions would be below 200 million tons of CO2 annually.

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Notes

  1. An additional search within the 912 title for at least one match of the topics “CO2-balance”, “carbon balance”, “greenhouse gas”, “carbon emission”, or “emission mitigation” returned only seven matches.

  2. Fruits and vegetables for distant markets are usually harvested earlier and more pesticides have to be used to avoid spoilage.

  3. While our discussion here focuses on aggregate values for eight major regions, country-specific results are available from the authors.

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  1. Research Unit Sustainability and Global Change, Departments of Geosciences and Economics, Hamburg University, Hamburg, Germany

    Uwe A. Schneider

  2. Institute of Biological and Environmental Sciences, School of Biological Sciences, University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen, UK

    Pete Smith

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Schneider, U.A., Smith, P. Energy intensities and greenhouse gas emission mitigation in global agriculture. Energy Efficiency 2, 195–206 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12053-008-9035-5

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