China is under pressure to improve its agricultural productivity to keep up with the demands of a growing population with increasingly resource-intensive diets. This productivity improvement must occur against a backdrop of carbon intensity reduction targets and a highly fragmented nutrient-inefficient farming system. Moreover the Chinese government increasingly recognizes the need to rationalize the management of the 800 million tonnes of agricultural crop straw that China produces each year up to 40% of which is burned in-field as a waste. Biochar produced from these residues and applied to land could contribute to China's agricultural productivity resource use efficiency and carbon reduction goals. However competing uses for China's straw residues are rapidly emerging particularly from bioenergy generation. Therefore it is important to understand the relative economic viability and carbon abatement potential of directing agricultural residues to biochar rather than bioenergy. Using cost-benefit analysis (CBA) and life-cycle analysis (LCA) this paper therefore compares the economic viability and carbon abatement potential of biochar production via pyrolysis with that of bioenergy production via briquetting and gasification. Straw reincorporation and in-field straw burning are used as baseline scenarios. We find that briquetting straw for heat energy is the most cost-effective carbon abatement technology requiring a subsidy of
DOI:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/gcbb.12220Altmetric score:
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Publication year
2014
Authors
Clare, A.; Shackley, S.; Joseph, S.; Hammond, J.; Pan, G.X.; Bloom, A.J.
Keywords
Agricultural economics, Bioenergy, Carbon
