|
Seminar Notice
Greenhouse Accounting: the view beyond carbon
Dr Chris Mitchell
CEO, CRC for Greenhouse Accounting
BRS Seminar
Friday 21 March 2003 11.00 am
EBB Conference Centre, near Core 4,
Edmund Barton Building
Canberra
In order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions enterprise managers
require methods by which they can estimate the greenhouse gas emissions
for which they are responsible. This principle is broad: applying
equally to managers of power stations as to farm managers. Broadly
the steps toward effective mitigation are: (i) identify the emissions
for which you have responsibility (ii) identify the key processes
(or process steps) that lead to emissions (iii) determine the management
interventions that may reduce emissions (iv) evaluate the cost and
effectiveness of proposed management changes (v) implement changes
(vi) monitor effectiveness. Steps such as these are practised within
the energy sectors, but are not yet always possible within agriculture.
One reason for this is that agricultural systems involve the cycling
of carbon and nitrogen and water (as well as other nutrients). This
leads to emissions of nitrous oxide and methane in addition to carbon
dioxide. Nitrous oxide, in particular is interesting from a greenhouse
perspective because over a one hundred year time horizon this gas
has a warming potential 296 times that of carbon dioxide. To date
the approach taken to estimate emissions of nitrous oxide from the
application of fertiliser used in agriculture has been to accept
that 1.25% of the nitrogen applied to landscapes as fertiliser will
be lost at nitrous oxide. This is a simple and yet reasonably robust
approach developed through international review.
Such an apparently clear process that leads to emissions (application
of nitrogen) suggests an equally simple management intervention:
reduce nitrogen application. However, when policymakers have tested
these relationships the knowledge base has been found wanting. For
example, a simple emissions factor approach is not capable of discriminating
between management practices that are more (or less) likely to produce
emissions. In other words the key process steps at the appropriate
(enterprise) scale have not been identified.
As we drill down into the problem linkages between greenhouse
gas emissions and the sustainability of agricultural systems become
evident. Nitrous oxide represents a nitrogen loss to the system
and often therefore a production loss. These and other dimensions
of the greenhouse-climate change-sustainability nexus will be explored.
View the Seminar Here
Chris Mitchell
Chief Executive Officer - CRC for Greenhouse Accounting has worked
at the science-policy interface on matters relating to climate change
for more than ten years; Previously worked at CSIRO where he coordinated
their climate change research program. He gets very excited about
science, but even more excited when he sees it helping to inform
decision-making
| 
