Poots to request changes to greenhouse gas calculations

DAERA Minister Edwin Poots is to request that the method for calculating greenhouse gas emissions is updated to more accurately reflect soil carbon sequestration.

This comes after researchers at AFBI found that grassland in NI could be removing up to 1.2m tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere each year. It is significantly higher than the 750,000t of CO2 which is currently used in the government’s greenhouse gas inventory.

AFBI researchers have calculated that the carbon sequestration potential of grasslands, hedgerows and forests in NI could offset 20% of greenhouse gas emissions from the NI agriculture sector.

“Minister Poots does feel there is a need for an evolution in the methodology used in measuring carbon sequestration given the work that is ongoing in AFBI and elsewhere,” a DAERA spokesperson told the Irish Farmers Journal.

“He plans to write to the national inventory steering committee to suggest the methodology is updated,” the spokesperson confirmed.

The steering committee oversees greenhouse gas emission reporting across the UK, and it needs to approve updates to calculations before they can be used in devolved regions, including NI.

Methane

However, updating greenhouse gas calculations to accurately account for the short atmospheric lifespan of methane is arguably of greater importance to fairly reflect agriculture’s contribution to climate change.

Methane, which is emitted by ruminant livestock, breaks down in the atmosphere after a decade, whereas CO2, which comes from burning fossil fuels, stays for centuries.

Scientists at the University of Oxford have developed a greenhouse gas accounting system, known as GWP*, which considers the different global warming effect of methane.

Overstated

An analysis by the Irish Farmers Journal compared GWP* to the current system, known as GWP100, and found that the global warming effect of the NI cattle herd is currently being overstated by a factor of almost 500.

The DAERA spokesperson said its figures on emissions from NI agriculture are based on a methodology which is approved by the conference of parties, an international meeting of countries on climate change. “The Department will keep the use of GWP*, as a potential metric, under review,” the DAERA spokesperson said.

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