Project Details

• Title: SELFS (Sustainable integrated pathways for carbon-negative energy, land and food system)
• Start Date:  28/04/2023
• End Date: 27/04/2027  
• Funding Body: Environmental Protection Agency
• Principal Investigator: Prof Hannah Daly
• Research Fellow: Dr Roisin Moriarty
• PhD Studentship: Neha Jaggeshar

Introduction

Inadequate climate mitigation efforts will lead to a global overshoot of the 1.5C temperature target. To preserve the Paris Agreement commitments, countries will need to go beyond “net-zero”, into a state where carbon is being drawn down from the atmosphere. “Carbon drawdown” will require profound changes in energy, land and food systems. The SELFS (Sustainable integrated pathways for carbon-negative energy, land and food systems) project, funded by the Environmental Protection Agency, will develop a new national-level integrated assessment model of energy-land-food systems to explore these possible divergent futures, focussing on Ireland, and draw insights for long-term climate policy.

Project Aims

The overall objective of SELFS is to develop new integrated energy-land-food systems modelling tools and capacity to support long-term climate planning and improve the evidence base for climate policy.

The specific objectives are as follows:

1. to quantify the potential fair level of CO₂ emissions Ireland may be required to sequester in the period to 2100 under different global temperature goals, near-term mitigation efforts and non-CO₂ emissions trajectories;
2. to review the potential mitigation and carbon sequestration levers specific to Ireland, including both technology and behaviour change, quantifying their total sequestration potential, energy requirement and land use requirement;
3. map the interactions, in particular the potential complementarities and conflicts, between deep decarbonisation and sequestration levers in each of the energy, land and food systems;
4. review global, regional and national modelling approaches to assessing integrated pathways for sustainable land-food-energy systems, including reviewing which interactions are captured in existing Integrated Assessment Models (IAMs)
5. develop a new modelling methodology, SELFS, to downscale global IAMs to a national scale and simulate long-time horizon integrated Sustainable Energy-Land-Food Systems scenarios under a range of demand and technology futures
6. model a range of divergent possible futures for Ireland using SELFS, integrating existing national modelling energy, agriculture and land use modelling frameworks, to inform long-term policy planning for climate mitigation

Towards an integrated energy, land and food systems model for Ireland

Context

Rapid emission reductions are our best bet against climate risks, as overconfidence in future temperature reversal is risky and uncertain. But as emissions fail to be cut quickly enough, the focus at national level needs to shift beyond achieving net zero emissions and start exploring long term carbon drawdown, where carbon removal exceeds emissions. At this point, considering competing land uses and interactions between energy and food systems will be critical for carbon removal options like forestry and bioenergy with carbon capture storage, and the energy demands of direct air capture technologies will also need careful consideration.  

Current generation of energy models, which underpin national energy planning, are unable to analyse the dynamics and trade-offs between options to address and avoid temperature overshoot - carbon dioxide removal, methane reduction and accelerated mitigation efforts. Particularly in how these impact land use and systems dependent on them, like agriculture and ecosystems.  .  

Poster

Towards a national integrated energy, land and food systems model for Ireland describes a project which is exploring the evolution of a national energy system model – the TIMES Ireland Model – into a full integrated assessment model; to allow the exploration of carbon drawdown scenarios and how these play out for energy, land and food systems. The TIMES Ireland Model is a bottom up, technology rich model guiding Ireland’s long term energy pathways. While the model is effective in examining carbon budget pathways for the energy systems and has the ability to explore outcome of acceleration mitigation, TIM does not include the land - energy dynamics. Without which, it cannot adequately assess broader impacts of energy systems on land, food and carbon storage as mitigation pathways progress beyond net zero to balancing emissions and removals towards the end of the century.  

Ireland is an interesting case study – the high per capita methane emissions and land area being majorly dedicated to livestock make the agricultural sector both a challenge and opportunity for mitigation. Moreover, reversing the significant historical deforestation and peatland drainage offer potential for carbon dioxide removal. However, existing sectoral models at national level do not fully capture the interactions, potential synergies and trade-offs between energy, land and food systems – particularly in tracking climate outcomes, land use conflicts or biodiversity risks as mitigation and carbon drawdown efforts intensify.  

While IAMs are well developed at a global scale, most policy and action are shaped nationally. As climate action moves beyond decarbonization through energy transition to deeper mitigation in AFOLU and carbon drawdown, energy system models need to evolve towards a more integrated modelling approach. Our central question is: What is the best method to integrate energy, land and food systems to fully capture Ireland’s sectoral greenhouse gas emissions? And how can we use this to drive accelerated mitigation beyond 2050?  

Our proposed approach is to incorporate the AFOLU dynamics, CDR, land use, climate outcomes and all sectoral GHG trajectories within the TIM framework, allowing the model to explicitly map overshoot scenarios that clearly illustrate sectoral synergies and trade-offs of different strategies and scenarios.  

Our focus include:  

1. Assessing Irish agricultural CH4 and N20 emissions to see how land use changes impact emission pathways  
2. Evaluating land use potential for agriculture, bioenergy, afforestation and nature protection 
3. Exploring the potential for BECCS and afforestation as effective land-based CDR options  
4. Analysing climate outcomes of emission profiles, including GHG concentrations over time and radiative forcing.  

Authors: Neha Jaggeshar, Dr Róisín Moriarty, Prof Hannah Daly

Project Outputs

Acknowledgement and disclaimer

This project is funded under the EPA Research Programme 2021-2030. The EPA Research Programme is a Government of Ireland initiative funded by the Department of the Environment, Climate and Communications.

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