Energy potentials and water requirements from perennial grasses on abandoned land in the former Soviet Union

Abstract

A ramp-up of bioenergy supply is vital in most climate change mitigation scenarios. Using abandoned land to produce perennial grasses is a promising option for near-term bioenergy deployment with minimal trade-offs to food production and the environment. The former Soviet Union (fSU) experienced substantial agricultural abandonment following its dissolution, but bioenergy potentials on these areas and their water requirements are still unclear. We integrate a regional land cover dataset tailored towards cropland abandonment, an agro-ecological crop yield model and a dataset of sustainable agricultural irrigation expansion potentials to quantify bioenergy potentials and water requirements on abandoned land in the fSU. Rain-fed bioenergy potentials are 3.5 EJ year-1 from 25 Mha of abandoned land, with land-sparing measures for nature conservation. Irrigation can be sustainably deployed on 7-18 Mha of abandoned land depending on water reservoir size, thereby increasing bioenergy potentials with rain-fed production elsewhere to 5.2-7.1 EJ year-1. This requires recultivating 29-33 Mha combined with 30-63 billion m3 year-1 of blue water withdrawals. Rain-fed productive abandoned land equals 26-61% of the projected regional fSU land use for dedicated bioenergy crops in 2050 for 2°C future scenarios. Sustainable irrigation can bring productive areas up to 30-80% of the projected fSU land requirements. Unravelling the complex interactions between land availability for bioenergy and water use at local levels is instrumental to ensure a sustainable bioenergy deployment.

Bridging Quantitative and Qualitative Science for BECCS in Abandoned Croplands

“…Gridded bioenergy dry mass yields of perennial crops were obtained from the parameterized bioenergy crop yield model Global Agro‐Ecological Zones (GAEZ) v4 (Fischer et al., 2021) driven by climatic conditions for a 30‐year period centered on the 2020s from the Norwegian Earth System Model (Seland et al., 2020) (Figures S1a–S1c in Supporting Information S1). GAEZ has been extensively used to model bioenergy crops (Næss et al., 2021; Staples et al., 2017, 2018) and has been validated against observational data (S. Li & Li, 2017) for perennial grasses (Gvein et al., 2023; Næss et al., 2022). We considered a modern agricultural system with closing rain‐fed yield gaps reliant on high levels of mechanization and optimal pesticides and fertilizer use.…”

“…Studies that have assessed achievable bioenergy resource potentials of recultivation have primarily focused on biophysical potentials (Leirpoll et al, 2021;Naess et al, 2021Naess et al, , 2022, and they have typically relied on remote sensing and output from crop yield models. Previous efforts at assessing recultivation from the farmer's perspective have focused on opportunities for food production (Fayet et al, 2022;Prishchepov et al, 2021;Subedi et al, 2022), while the processes and practices that could enable local innovation for bioenergy recultivation have been underexplored.…”

Application of Genetic Algorithm in Optimization Simulation of Industrial Waste Land Reuse

“…Respecting the natural growth state and using the above ecological and ecological restoration methods to transform the abandoned land, the first thing to do is to preserve the characteristic Natural landscape of the site. Continuing to update the visual landscape in the venue for people to enjoy and rest, the combination of functionality and visual landscape has jointly created a new way of life [11,16]. Based on the above analysis and summary, the reconstruction and restoration of industrial waste land can be adjusted from the following five principles: Ecological priority principle, respect for the site principle, adaptation to local conditions principle, people-oriented principle, and harmonious coexistence principle.…”