H058-0005
Trade-offs of large-scale bioenergy plantations with future water availability

Wednesday, 9 December 2020
Poster
Fabian Stenzel1, Dieter Gerten1, Constanze Werner1, Naota Hanasaki2, Wolfgang Lucht1, Sylvia Tramberend3, Peter Greve4, Yoshihide Wada5 and Jonas Jägermeyr6, (1)Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Potsdam, Germany, (2)National Institute for Environmental Studies, Ibaraki, Japan, (3)IIASA International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, Water, Laxenburg, Austria, (4)IIASA International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, Laxenburg, Austria, (5)International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, Laxenburg, Austria, (6)University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, United States
Abstract:
In scenarios of 21st century climate change mitigation, negative emission technologies (NETs) are considered necessary. Bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) is supposed to provide substantial amounts of electric energy or liquid fuels (up to 500 EJ/yr) and sequester 0.1–2 GtC/yr in 2050 and 0.3–3.3 GtC/yr in 2100, and is thus assumed to be deployed at large scale and rather early in the century (together with afforestation) in contrast to more expensive NETs like direct air capture.

We believe that crucial side-effects of NETs regarding environmental and social dimensions in the complex earth system are not receiving the appropriate attention.

We thus exemplarily chose the water-dimension and analyze the required irrigation water demand of global scale deployment of bioenergy plantations. Climate change will also impact water stress, therefore we subsequently investigate what would exert more water stress in the future, either a strong climate change scenario (3°C warming in 2100) or a strong climate mitigation scenario (1.5°C warming in 2100) using irrigated BECCS.

We find that the total global area under severe water stress might strongly increase compared to today (from 1 to 1.9 Gha), which might double the number of people affected (from 2.3 to 4.6 billion). This may surpass the avoided climate change impact (1.5 Gha affecting 4 billion people).

Additionally we analyze a scenario with irrigated BECCS accompanied by sustainable water management (environmental flow protection and advanced on-field water implemented on both agricultural and bioenergy sites), which could reduce the pressure on ecosystems and humans to below the levels of the climate change scenario.

Our results also show that globally, the amount of people facing severe water stress will be much higher in general, due to climate change and further consolidated by anticipated population growth. It is thus imperative to minimize additional water demand in an already highly water stressed future world, considering also the strong regional differences.

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