Helping farmers reduce greenhouse gas emissions
Jim Paice, Minister of State for Agriculture has announced funding of £12.6m, from Defra to improve understanding of how UK agriculture contributes to climate change. NPL is one of sixteen research organisations from across the UK who will contribute to the project.
It is estimated that agriculture contributes about 8% of all UK greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The current UK National GHG Inventory evaluates emissions from agriculture using the most simplified approach to accounting, which leads to large uncertainties in the reported levels. The UK Committee on Climate Change has set an intended GHG emission reduction budget of 34% in 2020 relative to 1990 figures and this will require the adoption of more sophisticated methods of measuring, reporting and verifying emissions for inventory purposes. The new programme aims to dramatically improve the emission uncertainties in the agricultural sector and give farmers the evidence needed to take more effective steps to reduce emissions.
The £12.6m will be invested over four and half years and will focus on improving accuracy and resolution of current emission factors through three closely linked projects. The first will look at data management and modelling, bringing existing data together to create a new inventory model and a set of revised emission factors with an assessment of uncertainty. The second will concentrate on methane (CH4) emissions, particularly on discriminating between CH4 missions from different livestock species and breeds/genotypes under different farming systems and representative farm business structures. The third will focus on nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions.
The methane project will use a number of different techniques to ensure standardisation across the range, NPL's Environmental Measurements group will set up intercomparison exercises between different techniques and measurement environments, where such studies have not already been carried out. NPL will also be using its own optical remote sensing techniques to measure methane emissions from a range of livestock over the next three years. The overall aim is to develop improved methane emission factors for the UK greenhouse gas inventory, as well as assessing the effectiveness of diet and husbandry techniques to minimise methane production.
For more information, please contact Tom Gardiner
Find out more about NPL's work in Environmental Measurement