Dylan Edgar

Project Title: Accounting and Decision Support Systems for Calculating Emission Reductions and Offsets in Carbon Farming Initiatives

Overview: The European Union has committed to achieving a 55% reduction in total GHG emissions by 2030, with national sector-level targets varying around this average. Due to the comparative difficulty of mitigating farm emissions, the Irish agriculture sector has been set a reduced 25% target to meet in this same time frame. To support this and other agricultural emission targets across Europe, the European Commission has announced that every land manager should have access to verified carbon emission/removal data by 2028, and that Carbon Farming, a business model that promotes low-emission practices and rewards land managers for increased carbon sequestration, will become a keystone of future farm incomes. By estimating the expected carbon emissions/removals and associated incomes from Carbon Farming, Dylan intends to build a scenario analysis model capable of proposing tailored, farm-level emission reduction pathways to farmers while maintaining or improving farm income. Although national frameworks for verifying agricultural carbon emissions/removals are still under development, the model will be designed to incorporate these frameworks as they become available. The initial stage of this project involves conducting a review of existing agricultural carbon calculators to determine their suitability for use in this project and to benchmark their predictions against measured data.

Programme Area: Environment, Soils and Land Use

Supervisors: Donal O'Brien, Gary Lanigan, Jon Hillier, and Pete Smith

Location: Teagasc Johnstown Castle, Co. Wexford

Funding Source: Teagasc