A European perspective of innovations toward mitigation of nitrogen-related greenhouse gases

Technology design and effectiveness studies available in the scientific literature demonstrate future mitigation potentials of nitrogen-related greenhouse gases. Here we investigate “innovations” influencing such emissions. These innovations mainly address agriculture: reduced meat diets, urban gardening, genetically modified crops, and precision farming, but also more distant options like vertical farming and cultured meat production, that is, indoor agriculture. While the latter approaches, which allow full management of effluents, seem very promising in terms of emission control, the cost estimates available would rule out any practical relevance. Technologies that currently seem more realistic offer much smaller mitigation potential. Information on energy need, greenhouse gas emissions, and land requirements feed into a semi-quantitative assessment, which delivers information in a format useful for existing European policy tools.

WINIWARTER Wilfried;  LEIP Adrian;  TUOMISTO Hanna Leena;  HAASTRUP Palle; 

2014-08-25

ELSEVIER SCI LTD

JRC90970

1877-3435,   

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1877343514000396,    https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC90970,   

10.1016/j.cosust.2014.07.006,