Climate bureaucracy is necessary – and it might be valuable for the agricultural sector
Like all other sectors in the Danish society the Agricultural sector must reduce its greenhouse gas emissions. This raises a discussion about means of action, production systems and opportunities to meet the targets set in the Danish Climate Act from 2020 and the political agreement about Agricultural from October 2021.
Besides the discussion on how to reduce emissions and how to politically ensure that the agriculture meets the targets, there is an equally important but more technical and often overlooked problem: Do we have an institutional framework that can verify the effect of different measures, document a hopefully decreasing greenhouse gas emission, and give advice on and follow the implementation of the political agreements?
It might sound dull and bureaucratic, but it is essential for a successful green transition that new initiatives, which reduce the emissions from the agricultural sector, can get approved and implemented quickly. Today, there is no such system, and we will never meet the goals of documented reduction of the agriculture’s greenhouse gas emissions if it is not established in some way. Ideally, it will not just be an extra bureaucratic system, as it will make it possible for the agricultural sector to document the production’s greenhouse gas emissions to the food industry and the consumers, which might become an important competitive advantage in the future.
The Climate Act is based on calculated emissions
The challenge of today is that the emissions from agriculture are based on approved emission values and approximated activity data instead of direct measures. Activity data is data that describes the distribution of e.g., a given technology to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. An example is that instead of measuring the emission of the individual field we calculate how much nitrous oxide per kg of the applied nitrogen is emitted.
This means that we combine the emission factor for nitrous oxide with the activity data for the applied nitrogen. Even though the calculation is well-founded, it covers a great range of variety where many other factors influence the magnitude of the emissions. If these factors are included, it is possible to make a more exact calculation of the emissions.
It is therefore essential to get a better handle on which emissions we count and how quickly we can get approval for new initiatives that reduce the emissions. These initiatives must have the opportunity to be included in the climate solution for the agriculture and should be able to be accounted for in the national emission inventories in a relatively short timeframe.
Today, department at Aarhus University collets activity data and calculates the emissions from the agriculture due to an agreement with the Danish Environmental Protection Agency. Other departments of Aarhus University work to determine the emission factors on instructions from the Danish Agricultural Agency.
Both agreements have been made under the so-called “research-based public service consultancy”, and the university fulfils their part as good as the economy in the agreements allows. The current agreements between the Danish Environmental Protection Agency, the Danish Agricultural Agency and Aarhus University do not allow for a large expansion of this work. This, among other things, due to the continued “economically reprioritization” of 2% annually, which the public service consultancy is still subject to. This cause the risk of hampering the ability to include the measures actually used in the agriculture, into account in the national emission inventories, as activity data and emission factors for these measures are not investigated fully.
Even though the agricultural agreement focusses on reductions caused by implementing measures in the agriculture, there is a risk of implementing reduction measures that will not be included in the national emission inventories.
Task force should develop a system for rapid definition and recognition of climate effect
With all the known and yet unknown climate measures hopefully to be seen in the coming years, it is crucial that a system for rapid definition and recognition of the measures’ climate effects is established. This could advantageously be done by creation of a task force across the central administration, the agricultural sector, the civil society and experts within the area.
The task force should advise the government, the central administration, and the universities on how an effective system, which ensures ability to test measures climate effect, can be set up. And how the implementation of these measures can be monitored. In addition, the task force should give advice on how to best support the work with the national emission inventories, so they reflect the agriculture’s real emissions on a factual and well-founded basis.
The good and the bad experiences from the work with nitrogen where different models have been tried out can preferably be taken into account. This applies both within the effort on nitrate leaching where there are many decades of experience to build on, but it also applies within the work with ammonia where the Danish Environmental Protection Agency has built a technology list partly via the so-called MELT system, with which there are both good and bad experiences.
A new entity?
No matter the mean of regulation, it is crucial for climate action in the agricultural sector that the public prioritizes the construction of an efficient and dynamic system for validating the effect of greenhouse gas-reducing measures on the farms. There is no proper system for this today where Aarhus University has the task of collecting scientific documentation in order to include the effect of a specific measure when making the national emission inventories.
The available scientific documentation does not necessarily apply to Danish conditions, and it is often the result of several years of research. This means that the documentation often takes place with a delay of 3-5 or even 10 years compared to when the measure was developed, and began to be used in practice. Therefore, an independent entity with the purpose to determine and approve the effect of the different measures could preferably get established. This will create a relatively rapid and flexible foundation to e.g., determine how much the implementation of a given measure will reduce the farm’s climate tax. Of course, the documentation must take place on a professional level which ensures that it at some point is possible to include the effect of the given measures in the national emission inventories, which after all must get approved by the Climate Convention (UNFCCC).
To ensure a more rapid inclusion of the measures’ climate effect it is necessary that either Aarhus University’s research based public service consultancy is markedly strengthened or a new, independent entity to carry out the job is established.
The task is multifaceted. The companies who develop the measures must be able to engage in a dialogue with the entity (whether it is the university, an Approved Technological Service Institute (GTS Institute) or a third place) about the requirements for the measurement of the effects. How must the measurements be carried out? How many measurements are necessary? Etc. Furthermore, the entity must be able to assist in the evaluation of the effect of a given measure. The evaluation itself will be made by experts but the documentation and the administrative work must be carried out by the established entity.
Last but not least, it is necessary that the distribution of a given measure (activity data) is followed closely. The entity, if it makes sense, could take care of this task as well, or at least help and support Aarhus University in their work. Hopefully, the work with making inventories of the different production practices and the distribution of different climate measures can be facilitated by some sort of self-reporting combined with random sampling.
Data can be valuable
The above mentioned may sound both bureaucratic and like a lot of work – for what? However, we do not see any other way, if we are to ensure the pace necessary in the green transition of the agriculture. The positive side of such a strengthened bureaucratic system could be that the industry will be able to get their greenhouse gas emissions verified by an independent third party. This would increase the credibility which will be useful in order to sell products with a reduced climate footprint at a higher price. Thus, a strengthened climate bureaucracy for the agricultural sector can contribute to ensure that Danish agriculture can sell its products at a price above the average on the world market also in the future. This could partly cover the investments in climate measures and thereby reducing agriculture climate impact.
Blog written by Tavs Nyord, CONCITO and Jørgen E. Olesen, Aarhus University.
