To limit future warming requires rapid reduction of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and achieving net zero by 2050, as required by UK legislation. Climate mitigation is led in government by the Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS). But Defra is responsible for efforts to reduce GHG emissions from four sectors: agriculture, waste and wastewater, land-use, and fluorinated gases (F-gases). Defra also has responsibility to promote forestry, which acts as a carbon sink. Together, the four Defra sectors represent 15% of the total net UK GHGs, with agriculture being the biggest contributor (about 10% of UK emissions).
Defra has research interests in reduction of emissions, the removal of GHG from the atmosphere, and in understanding the impacts of mitigation activities on other environmental outcomes.
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This question was published as part of the set of ARIs in this document:
To meet the 2020 renewable energy target the UK is going to need biomass, and lots of it. DECC has an aspiration for an additional 20-38TWh of biomass electricity by 2020 and this will require around 12-23 million dry to...
Funded by: EPSRC
Lead research organisation: University of Southampton
The project aims to quantify the real GHG balance of different land use transitions to bioenergy crops and can provide a full life cycle analysis for different feedstocks.
Biomass is plant or woody material that during its growth has absorbed CO2 from the atmosphere through photosynthesis . When the biomass is used to produce bioenergy it re-releases to atmosphere the same amount of CO2 as...
Funded by: EPSRC
Lead research organisation: Aston University
The project aims to develop sustainable bioenergy systems and assess the realistic potential resource for UK bioenergy, which can help optimize sustainable growth of biomass for power generation and provide a full life cycle analysis for different feedstocks.
Bioenergy provides a significant proportion of the UK's low carbon energy supply for heat, transport fuel and electricity. There is scope for bioenergy to provide much higher levels of low carbon energy in future, but th...
Funded by: EPSRC
Lead research organisation: University of Manchester
The project aims to increase the contribution of UK bioenergy to meet strategic environmental targets, but does not specifically address the optimization of sustainable growth of biomass or provide a full life cycle analysis for different feedstocks.