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Delayed use of bioenergy crops might threaten climate and food security

Nature volume 609, pages 299–306 (2022)Cite this article

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Abstract

The potential of mitigation actions to limit global warming within 2 °C (ref. 1) might rely on the abundant supply of biomass for large-scale bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) that is assumed to scale up markedly in the future2,3,4,5. However, the detrimental effects of climate change on crop yields may reduce the capacity of BECCS and threaten food security6,7,8, thus creating an unrecognized positive feedback loop on global warming. We quantified the strength of this feedback by implementing the responses of crop yields to increases in growing-season temperature, atmospheric CO2 concentration and intensity of nitrogen (N) fertilization in a compact Earth system model9. Exceeding a threshold of climate change would cause transformative changes in social–ecological systems by jeopardizing climate stability and threatening food security. If global mitigation alongside large-scale BECCS is delayed to 2060 when global warming exceeds about 2.5 °C, then the yields of agricultural residues for BECCS would be too low to meet the Paris goal of 2 °C by 2200. This risk of failure is amplified by the sustained demand for food, leading to an expansion of cropland or intensification of N fertilization to compensate for climate-induced yield losses. Our findings thereby reinforce the urgency of early mitigation, preferably by 2040, to avoid irreversible climate change and serious food crises unless other negative-emission technologies become available in the near future to compensate for the reduced capacity of BECCS.

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Fig. 1: Climate–yield feedbacks owing to reduced biomass feedstocks of crop residues for BECCS and the potential impacts on food supply and LUC.
Fig. 2: Relationships between crop yield, climate and land management.
Fig. 3: Impact of agricultural feedbacks on climate warming and food supply.
Fig. 4: The nexus of bioenergy, climate warming and food security.
Fig. 5: Agricultural feedbacks affect the relationship between warming and cumulative CO2 emissions.
Fig. 6: Contribution of climate mitigation to reduce the regional food gap.

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Data availability

Further material is available in the Supplementary Materials. Code and data used for our analyses are available on the GitHub repository: https://github.com/rongwang-fudan/OSCAR_Agriculture_Global.

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Acknowledgements

R.W. appreciates the provision of funds from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (41877506) and the Chinese Thousand Youth Talents Program. R.Z., X.T., J. Chen and R.W. acknowledge support from the Shanghai International Science and Technology Partnership Project (21230780200). X.T. and R.W. acknowledge support from the Fudan-Sinar Mas Think Tank Fund (JGSXK2014). P.C. acknowledges support from the ANR CLAND Convergence Institute 16-CONV-0003. J.P. and J.S. acknowledge the financial support from the Catalan Government grants SGR 2017-1005 and AGAUR-2020PANDE00117, the Spanish Government grant PID2019-110521GB-I00 and the Fundación Ramón Areces grant ELEMENTAL-CLIMATE. T.G. acknowledges support from the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) under grant agreement P31796-N29 (ERM project).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Shanghai Key Laboratory of Atmospheric Particle Pollution and Prevention (LAP³), Department of Environmental Science and Engineering, Fudan University, Shanghai, China

    Siqing Xu, Rong Wang, James H. Clark, Xiaofan Xing, Jianmin Chen & Lin Wang

  2. IRDR International Center of Excellence on Risk Interconnectivity and Governance on Weather/Climate Extremes Impact and Public Health, Fudan University, Shanghai, China

    Rong Wang, Jianmin Chen, Lin Wang, Xu Tang & Renhe Zhang

  3. Institute of Atmospheric Sciences, Fudan University, Shanghai, China

    Rong Wang, Jianmin Chen, Lin Wang, Xu Tang & Renhe Zhang

  4. Shanghai Frontiers Science Center of Atmosphere-Ocean Interaction, Shanghai, China

    Rong Wang & Renhe Zhang

  5. MOE Laboratory for National Development and Intelligent Governance, Fudan University, Shanghai, China

    Rong Wang & Renhe Zhang

  6. Institute of Eco-Chongming (IEC), Shanghai, China

    Rong Wang

  7. International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), Laxenburg, Austria

    Thomas Gasser

  8. Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l’Environnement, CEA CNRS UVSQ, Gif-sur-Yvette, France

    Philippe Ciais & Yves Balkanski

  9. Climate and Atmosphere Research Center (CARE-C), The Cyprus Institute, Nicosia, Cyprus

    Philippe Ciais

  10. CSIC, Global Ecology Unit CREAF-CSIC-UAB, Bellaterra, Spain

    Josep Peñuelas & Jordi Sardans

  11. CREAF, Cerdanyola del Vallès, Spain

    Josep Peñuelas & Jordi Sardans

  12. Institut Pierre-Simon Laplace, Sorbonne Université/CNRS, Paris, France

    Olivier Boucher

  13. Department of Biology, University of Antwerp, Wilrijk, Belgium

    Ivan A. Janssens

  14. Green Chemistry Centre of Excellence, University of York, York, UK

    James H. Clark

  15. Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China

    Junji Cao

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Contributions

R.W. conceived the research, designed the study and wrote the first version of manuscript. S.X. compiled data, performed the research and prepared graphs. T.G. provided the OSCAR model. P.C., T.G., J.P., Y.B., O.B., I.A.J., J.S., J.H.C., J. Cao and R.Z. provided tools analysing the relationship between climate change and food security. J.P., P.C., I.A.J. and J.S. provided tools analysing the ecological impact of using bioenergy. J.H.C. and X.F.X. provided tools analysing the measures of using green energy. J. Cao, J. Chen, L.W., X.T. and R.Z. provided tools analysing the impact of climate change on the agronomy. All co-authors interpreted the results and contributed to the writing.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Rong Wang.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Nature thanks Gernot Wagner and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work. Peer reviewer reports are available.

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Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

This file contains Supplementary Figures 1–16, Supplementary Tables 1–6 and further references.

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Supplementary Data Set 1

The data used for yield–climate fitting. The data of crop yields with the growing-season temperature, carbon dioxide concentration and nitrogen fertilization intensity are compiled from the literature.

Supplementary Data Set 2

The data of crop yields, nitrogen (N) fertilization, carbon dioxide (CO2) concentration and the average growing-season temperature and precipitation over cropland. The crop yield by species, N fertilization, CO2 concentrations, average growing-season temperature and precipitation for 167 countries in 2019 used in the model are listed in this extended dataset.

Supplementary Data Set 3

The global cropping calendar data. The cropping calendar data in different countries are compiled for wheat, rice and maize from the literature.

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Xu, S., Wang, R., Gasser, T. et al. Delayed use of bioenergy crops might threaten climate and food security. Nature 609, 299–306 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-022-05055-8

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