Marginal abatement cost curves for UK agriculture, forestry, land-use and land-use change sector out to 2022

Greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture, land use, land use change and forestry (ALULUCF) are a significant percentage of UK industrial emissions. The UK Government is committed to ambitious targets for reducing emissions and all significant industrial sources are coming under increasing scrutiny. The task of allocating shares of future reductions falls to the newly appointed Committee on Climate Change (CCC), which needs to consider efficient mitigation potential across a range of sectors. Marginal abatement cost curves are derived for a range of mitigation measures in the agriculture and forestry sectors over a range of adoption scenarios and for the years 2012, 2017 and 2022. The results indicate that in 2022 around 6.36 MtCO2e could be abated at negative or zero cost. Further, in same year over 17% of agricultural GHG emissions (7.85MtCO2e) could be abated at a cost of less than the 2022 Shadow Price of Carbon (£34tCO2e).

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