Bridging Quantitative and Qualitative Science for BECCS in Abandoned Croplands
Peer reviewed, Journal article
Published version
Permanent lenke
https://hdl.handle.net/11250/3121379Utgivelsesdato
2024Metadata
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Originalversjon
10.1029/2023EF003849Sammendrag
Bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) plays a vital role in most climate change mitigation scenarios, where a solution for sustainable near-term bioenergy expansion is to grow energy crops such as perennial grasses on recently abandoned cropland. There is a need to combine model-based insights into theoretical potential and future biomass supply with more fine-grained sociotechnical analysis to move toward realistic policies and innovation strategies. We combine natural science insights anchored in quantitative bioenergy modeling with qualitative social science anchored in the multi-level perspective. Using these mixed methods enables a global-to-local-to-global level assessment of near-term bioenergy recultivation opportunities for abandoned cropland. Norway is the local case. There are three main findings. First, the ongoing recultivation trends for food/feed production risks making gains in aboveground carbon stocks from natural regrowth on the mapped abandoned cropland over a 30-year evaluation period almost negligible. Second, delaying a BECCS recultivation of abandoned cropland will make it impossible to reach high-end mitigation potentials, and an accelerated BECCS recultivation guided by a policy push is needed to ensure stronger mitigation. Third, we unravel several real-world challenges associated with bioenergy resource and supply modeling. Remote-sensing techniques alone cannot capture actual land availability for land-based climate change mitigation strategies. Local-level sociotechnical conditions are generally found insufficiently supportive to align with the rapid near-term bioenergy crop expansion found in 2°C scenarios from integrated assessment. The integration of mixed quantitative and qualitative methods is key to better understand the role of BECCS in climate change mitigation.