Desert 'carbon Farming' To Curb CO2
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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 locations could be an effective method of suppressing emissions of CO2.

Dubbed "carbon farming", scientists say the concept is economically competitive with modern carbon capture and storage jobs.

But critics say the concept might be have unexpected, negative impacts consisting of driving up food costs.

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

Seeds of modification

Jatropha curcas is a plant that came from Central America and is extremely well adjusted to severe conditions including extremely 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 one hectare of jatropha could capture up to 25 tonnes of co2 from the atmosphere every year. The scientists based their estimates 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 excellent growth, an excellent action from these plants. I feel there will be no issue attempting it on a much larger scale, for instance ten thousand hectares in the start," he said.

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

The researchers say that a crucial component of the strategy would be the schedule of desalination centers. This indicates that initially, any plantations would be restricted to coastal locations.

They are wishing to develop bigger trials in desert areas of Oman or Qatar. Prof Becker says that unlike other schemes that just offset the carbon that people produce, the planting of jatropha might be a great, short-term service to climate modification.

"I think it is an excellent idea since we are really drawing out carbon dioxide from the environment - and it is totally various in between drawing out and preventing."

According to the researcher's estimations 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 strategies, such as the more high tech carbon capture and storage, external (CCS).

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

Growing jatropha not only soaks up CO2 but has other advantages. The plants would assist to make desert locations more habitable, and the plant's seeds can be collected for biofuel state the researchers, supplying a financial return.

"Jatropha is ideal to be become biokerosene - it is even better than biodiesel," stated Prof Becker.

But other experts in this area are not persuaded. They indicate the reality that in 2007 and 2008 great deals of jatropha trees were planted for biofuel, specifically in Africa. But a lot of these endeavors ended in tears,, external as the plants were not extremely effective in managing dry conditions.

Lucy Hurn is the biofuels campaign supervisor for the charity, Actionaid. She says that while jatropha was when viewed as the excellent, green hope the reality 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 often individuals who need minimal land to graze their animals, they are getting food from that area - we would not class the land as limited."

She pointed out that jatropha is highly toxic and can pollute 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 enter and grow these huge plantations to handle a problem these individuals didn't actually trigger?"

Follow Matt on Twitter, external.

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Biofuels are 'unreasonable strategy'

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15 April 2013

Related web links

Universität Hohenheim

European Geosciences Union

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