Abstract
Bioenergy from perennial grasses mitigates climate change via displacing fossil fuels and storing atmospheric CO2 belowground as soil carbon. Here, we conduct a critical review to examine whether increasing plant diversity in bioenergy grassland systems can further increase their climate change mitigation potential. We find that compared with highly productive monocultures, diverse mixtures tend to produce as great or greater yields. In particular, there is strong evidence that legume addition improves yield, in some cases equivalent to mineral nitrogen fertilization at 33–150 kg per ha. Plant diversity can also promote soil carbon storage in the long term, reduce soil N2O emissions by 30%–40%, and suppress weed invasion, hence reducing herbicide use. These potential benefits of plant diversity translate to 50%–65% greater life-cycle greenhouse gas savings for biofuels from more diverse grassland biomass grown on degraded soils. In addition, there is growing evidence that plant diversity can accelerate land restoration.
Highlights
More than 84% of global energy production is derived from fossil fuels, including natural gas, petroleum, and coal.[1]
Energy production from these non-renewable resources releases $35 billion Mg of CO2 per year; if trends do not change, annual emissions will exceed 43 billion Mg by 2050.2 Fossil-fuel-based CO2 emissions are the primary cause of climate change, which is expected to result in average global temperature increases between 1.5 and 4C by 2050.3 The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warns that even the lowest predicted increases could trigger disastrous consequences, including sea level rise, mass population displacement, increased frequency of extreme weather, and mass species extinctions.[3]
Bioenergy derived from plant material such as wood, grain crops, or perennial grasses can reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions compared to energy derived from fossil fuels[4,5] by leaving ancient fossil carbon in the ground and utilizing carbon sources that were recently removed from the atmosphere by plants
Summary
More than 84% of global energy production is derived from fossil fuels, including natural gas, petroleum, and coal.[1].
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