Nature – Xu et al. (2022): Delayed use of bioenergy crops might threaten climate and food security

Siqing Xu, Rong Wang, Thomas Gasser, Philippe Ciais, Josep Peñuelas, Yves Balkanski, Olivier Boucher, Ivan A. Janssens, Jordi Sardans, James H. Clark, Junji Cao, Xiaofan Xing, Jianmin Chen, Lin Wang, Xu Tang, Renhe Zhang IN: Nature 609, 299–306 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-022-05055-8

The potential of mitigation actions to limit global warming within 2 °C 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 future. However, the detrimental effects of climate change on crop yields may reduce the capacity of BECCS and threaten food security, thus creating an unrecognized positive feedback loop on global warming. The authors 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 model.

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