IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/agisys/v103y2010i4p198-209.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Developing greenhouse gas marginal abatement cost curves for agricultural emissions from crops and soils in the UK

Author

Listed:
  • MacLeod, Michael
  • Moran, Dominic
  • Eory, Vera
  • Rees, R.M.
  • Barnes, Andrew
  • Topp, Cairistiona F.E.
  • Ball, Bruce
  • Hoad, Steve
  • Wall, Eileen
  • McVittie, Alistair
  • Pajot, Guillaume
  • Matthews, Robin
  • Smith, Pete
  • Moxey, Andrew

Abstract

Emissions of greenhouse gases from agriculture are likely to come under increasing scrutiny as governments around the world develop proposals for large cuts in greenhouse gas emissions. Yet while there is a range of technically feasible measures for reducing agricultural emissions, it is not immediately apparent which options deliver the most economically efficient reductions in greenhouse gases. This paper develops a marginal abatement cost curve (MACC) for crop and soil measures applicable in UK agriculture. A range of specific abatement measures are screened for their cost-effectiveness and mitigation potential in the field. An efficient subset is identified with reference to a cost per tonne threshold of [less-than-or-equals, slant]£100/tCO2e. Results indicate that the abatement potential by 2022 is likely to be between 1.628 and 10.164 MtCO2e y-1 depending on the policies implemented, with a central estimate of 5.196 MtCO2e y-1. This represents 11.5% of the 2005 UK agricultural GHG emissions.

Suggested Citation

  • MacLeod, Michael & Moran, Dominic & Eory, Vera & Rees, R.M. & Barnes, Andrew & Topp, Cairistiona F.E. & Ball, Bruce & Hoad, Steve & Wall, Eileen & McVittie, Alistair & Pajot, Guillaume & Matthews, Rob, 2010. "Developing greenhouse gas marginal abatement cost curves for agricultural emissions from crops and soils in the UK," Agricultural Systems, Elsevier, vol. 103(4), pages 198-209, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:agisys:v:103:y:2010:i:4:p:198-209
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0308-521X(10)00003-X
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Schneider, Uwe A. & McCarl, Bruce A. & Schmid, Erwin, 2007. "Agricultural sector analysis on greenhouse gas mitigation in US agriculture and forestry," Agricultural Systems, Elsevier, vol. 94(2), pages 128-140, May.
    2. Pérez, Ignacio & Holm-Müller, Karin, 2005. "Economic Incentives and Technological Options to Global Warming Emission Abatement in European Agriculture," 89th Seminar, February 2-5, 2005, Parma, Italy 239275, European Association of Agricultural Economists.
    3. Uwe Schneider & Bruce McCarl, 2003. "Economic Potential of Biomass Based Fuels for Greenhouse Gas Emission Mitigation," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 24(4), pages 291-312, April.
    4. Deybe, Daniel & Fallot, Abigail, 2003. "Non-CO2 greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture: analysing the room for manoeuvre for mitigation, in case of carbon pricing," 2003 Annual Meeting, August 16-22, 2003, Durban, South Africa 25873, International Association of Agricultural Economists.
    5. Robert H. Beach & Benjamin J. DeAngelo & Steven Rose & Changsheng Li & William Salas & Stephen J. DelGrosso, 2008. "Mitigation potential and costs for global agricultural greenhouse gas emissions-super-1," Agricultural Economics, International Association of Agricultural Economists, vol. 38(2), pages 109-115, March.
    6. Carlo Giupponi & Francesco Bosello & Andrea Povellato, 2007. "A Review of Recent Studies on Cost Effectiveness of GHG Mitigation Measures in the European Agro-Forestry Sector," Working Papers 2007.14, Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei.
    7. Pushpam Kumar & Uwe A. Schneider, 2008. "Greenhouse gas emission mitigation through agriculture," Working Papers FNU-155, Research unit Sustainability and Global Change, Hamburg University, revised Feb 2008.
    8. Wassmann, R. & Pathak, H., 2007. "Introducing greenhouse gas mitigation as a development objective in rice-based agriculture: II. Cost-benefit assessment for different technologies, regions and scales," Agricultural Systems, Elsevier, vol. 94(3), pages 826-840, June.
    9. Pathak, H. & Wassmann, R., 2007. "Introducing greenhouse gas mitigation as a development objective in rice-based agriculture: I. Generation of technical coefficients," Agricultural Systems, Elsevier, vol. 94(3), pages 807-825, June.
    10. Stéphane Cara & Martin Houzé & Pierre-Alain Jayet, 2005. "Methane and Nitrous Oxide Emissions from Agriculture in the EU: A Spatial Assessment of Sources and Abatement Costs," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 32(4), pages 551-583, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Vermont, Bruno & De Cara, Stéphane, 2010. "How costly is mitigation of non-CO2 greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture?: A meta-analysis," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 69(7), pages 1373-1386, May.
    2. De Cara, Stéphane & Jayet, Pierre-Alain, 2011. "Marginal abatement costs of greenhouse gas emissions from European agriculture, cost effectiveness, and the EU non-ETS burden sharing agreement," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 70(9), pages 1680-1690, July.
    3. Wang, Wen, 2015. "Intégrer l'agriculture dans les politiques d'atténuation chinoises," Economics Thesis from University Paris Dauphine, Paris Dauphine University, number 123456789/14999 edited by Perthuis, Christian de.
    4. Carlo Giupponi & Francesco Bosello & Andrea Povellato, 2007. "A Review of Recent Studies on Cost Effectiveness of GHG Mitigation Measures in the European Agro-Forestry Sector," Working Papers 2007.14, Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei.
    5. Zhen, Wei & Qin, Quande & Wei, Yi-Ming, 2017. "Spatio-temporal patterns of energy consumption-related GHG emissions in China's crop production systems," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 104(C), pages 274-284.
    6. Nigel Key & Gregoire Tallard, 2012. "Mitigating methane emissions from livestock: a global analysis of sectoral policies," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 112(2), pages 387-414, May.
    7. Cordelia Kreft & Robert Huber & David Schäfer & Robert Finger, 2024. "Quantifying the impact of farmers' social networks on the effectiveness of climate change mitigation policies in agriculture," Journal of Agricultural Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 75(1), pages 298-322, February.
    8. Henseler, Martin & Dechow, Rene, 2014. "Simulation of regional nitrous oxide emissions from German agricultural mineral soils: A linkage between an agro-economic model and an empirical emission model," Agricultural Systems, Elsevier, vol. 124(C), pages 70-82.
    9. Breen, James P. & Donnellan, Trevor & Westhoff, Patrick C., 2012. "Reducing Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Irish Agriculture: A market-based approach," 2012 Conference, August 18-24, 2012, Foz do Iguacu, Brazil 130555, International Association of Agricultural Economists.
    10. Garnache, Cloé & Mérel, Pierre R. & Lee, Juhwan & Six, Johan, 2017. "The social costs of second-best policies: Evidence from agricultural GHG mitigation," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 82(C), pages 39-73.
    11. Ancuta Isbasoiu & Pierre-Alain Jayet & Stéphane De Cara, 2021. "Increasing food production and mitigating agricultural greenhouse gas emissions in the European Union: impacts of carbon pricing and calorie production targeting," Environmental Economics and Policy Studies, Springer;Society for Environmental Economics and Policy Studies - SEEPS, vol. 23(2), pages 409-440, April.
    12. repec:diw:diwwpp:dp1476 is not listed on IDEAS
    13. Benjamin Dequiedt & Dominic Moran, 2014. "The cost of emissions mitigation by legume crops in French agriculture," Working Papers 1410, Chaire Economie du climat.
    14. Eory, Vera, 2015. "Evaluating the use of marginal abatement cost curves applied to greenhouse gas abatement in agriculture," Working Papers 199777, Scotland's Rural College (formerly Scottish Agricultural College), Land Economy & Environment Research Group.
    15. Stanley U. Okoro & Udo Schickhoff & Uwe A. Schneider, 2018. "Impacts of Bioenergy Policies on Land-Use Change in Nigeria," Energies, MDPI, vol. 11(1), pages 1-18, January.
    16. Lungarska, Anna & Chakir, Raja, 2018. "Climate-induced Land Use Change in France: Impacts of Agricultural Adaptation and Climate Change Mitigation," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 147(C), pages 134-154.
    17. Garnache, Cloe & Merel, Pierre R., 2012. "Carbon market policy design: Investigating the role of payments aggregation," 2012 Annual Meeting, August 12-14, 2012, Seattle, Washington 124960, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    18. Stephane de Cara & Bruno Vermont, 2014. "Atténuation de l’effet de serre d’origine agricole : efficacité en coûts et instruments de régulation," Post-Print hal-01173041, HAL.
    19. Zou, Xiaoxia & Li, Yu’e & Cremades, Roger & Gao, Qingzhu & Wan, Yunfan & Qin, Xiaobo, 2013. "Cost-effectiveness analysis of water-saving irrigation technologies based on climate change response: A case study of China," Agricultural Water Management, Elsevier, vol. 129(C), pages 9-20.
    20. Huber, Robert & Tarruella, Marta & Schäfer, David & Finger, Robert, 2023. "Marginal climate change abatement costs in Swiss dairy production considering farm heterogeneity and interaction effects," Agricultural Systems, Elsevier, vol. 207(C).
    21. Kreft, Cordelia & Huber, Robert & Wuepper, David & Finger, Robert, 2021. "The role of non-cognitive skills in farmers' adoption of climate change mitigation measures," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 189(C).

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:agisys:v:103:y:2010:i:4:p:198-209. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/agsy .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.