“Someone’s sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago” —Warren Buffett.

Research aim

  1. Building a detailed, spatially explicit, internationally trade linked GMRIO of food and energy systems at a ~5arc min(9km) resolution.
  2. Exploring current environmental and social footprints of these systems and the threats or opportunities presented by EU net-zero strategies.
  3. Incorporating net-zero pathways from the literature into the model from both production and consumption perspectives, and connecting land suitability maps for future renewable energy, mining, and agriculture potentials.
  4. Using projected water and food yield maps to identify important issues and opportunities for net-zero strategies.

Cause and effect

  1. To avoid environmental damage, the food and energy systems urgently need transition. EU net-zero strategies(including but not limited to): consumption shifts(transition to nationally recommended diets, plant-based diets, reduced consumer waste, and closing yield gaps1) and co2 removal.

  1. Proposed net-zero strategies will have enormous impacts across nations and continents as EU engages in larger net-imports of resources and emissions than any other continents.

  2. Local conditions are key to identifying net-zero trade-offs and opportunities

  • large changes in land use like land sparing/sharing, biodiversity preservation and synergistic renewable energy development aligned with other net-zero targets
  • Natural climate solutions and carbon sequestration opportunities in the sparing land. Land and mining requirements for renewable energy.
  1. Therefore we need a high-spatial resolution and a supply-chain integrated model to fully assess EU net-zero strategies and pathways.
  • Disadvantages of current land-use models:
    a coarse resolution at ~25arcmin (45km);
    limited number of regions;
    omit socioeconomic factors (focusing overwhelmingly on price optimization);
    not connected to international supply chains.
  • GMRIOs can trace teleconnection(environmental and social impacts) international supply chains, but they are available at a national level only and with limited product detail in food systems.
  • Already some work 2 done on spatially explicit approaches for liking supply chains and physical national IOTs with a high product resolution.
  1. Finally we will go beyond this by building a spatially explicit, trade-linked global toolbox and use it to assess environmental and social footprints of EU net-zero strategies to 2050.

Working packages

WP1：Assessing spatially explicit production-based footprints (land use actually) of food and energy systems.

  • A set of globally consistent geographical information databases.
  • Food system: 5-arc-minutes biomass maps: crop, animal and forestry databases (e.g. cropland for fodder, human consumption and biofuels).
  • Energy system: mining for fossil fuels and renewables, refinement3, transmission4 and power plants (varying resolutions for the energy system).

  1. Harmonised global datasets of wind and solar farm locations and power. OpenStreetMap, published on 15 January 2020;

  2. A global-scale data set of mining areas. Vienna (Wu), satellite images, including open cuts, tailings dams, waste rock dumps, water ponds, and processing infrastructure, 21,060 polygons that add up to 57,277 km2, published on 08 September 2020;

  3. Global mining areas targeting materials critical for renewable energy production and other materials, from paper Renewable energy production will exacerbate mining threats to biodiversity, Nature Communications, published on 01 September 2020;

An associated paid dataset from S&P Global Market Intelligence, with its coverage.

  1. Global Power Plant Database v1.3.0, World Resources Institute, June 2021, csv, 35000 power plants over 167 countries, including thermal plants (e.g. coal, gas, oil, nuclear, biomass, waste, geothermal) and renewables (e.g. hydro, wind, solar).
  1. EDGAR V6.0 Global GHG Emissions per sector and country, 1970–2018, 0.1degree x 0.1degree;

The need for a high spatial resolution and supply-chain integrated model to fully assess EU net-zero strategies and pathways.

regions of high inequality: regions where the people have a relatively lower income than other regions.

Summary

  1. To integrate production maps with environmental and social pressures. (eg. co2, natural carbon storage, inequality and land grabbig)
    Output: a globally production-based footprint (land use) of food and energy systems.
  2. then we

  1. About “closing the yield gaps” given by European Commission. ↩︎

  2. Papers: Brazilian soy and SEI-PCS model;
    The Construction of the Food and Agriculture Biomass Input–Output Model;
    Building global physical input-output tables in a virtual laboratory. ↩︎

  3. Refining: A petroleum refinery is a processing plant that converts crude oil into a mix of different finished petroleum products. ↩︎

  4. Energy transmission is the most basic function of global energy interconnection. Electric energy transmission is an important mode of energy transport, with the flow of electricity generated from coal as well as hydro, nuclear, wind, and solar energy all transmitted through power grids. ↩︎