scholarly journals The carbon footprint of meat and dairy proteins: A practical perspective to guide low carbon footprint dietary choices

2021 ◽  
Vol 321 ◽  
pp. 128766
Author(s):  
R. Gaillac ◽  
S. Marbach
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. Gaillac ◽  
S. Marbach

Meat and dairy products in the food industry represent a significant portion of anthropogenic green house gas emissions. To meet the Intergovernemental Panel on Climate Change recommendations to limit global warming, these emissions should go down. Meat and dairy products are also responsible for the majority of our daily, vital, protein intake. Yet, meat and dairy products contain very different amounts of proteins, making it difficult in general to rationalize which protein source has the lowest carbon footprint. Here we offer a practical and pedagogical review, comparing the carbon footprint of a variety of meat and dairy products with respect to their protein content. We report further on a number of consumer oriented questions (local or imported? organic or not? cow or goat milk? hard or soft cheese?). We investigate finally the carbon footprint of different dietary choices for several countries, by keeping the total number of meat and dairy proteins constant. Dairy-only diets are in general a little less carbon intensive than current diets; while up to 60% lower carbon footprint diets can be achieved by eating for only part poultry, small animals and yogurt. Our assembled data is readily available through an open source app allowing to investigate personalized dietary scenarios. We expect our results to help consumers perform enlightened carbon footprint dietary choices. Our methodology may be applied to broader questions, such as the carbon footprint of proteins in general (including fish and plant proteins). We hope our work will drive more studies focusing on consumer-oriented questions.


2021 ◽  
pp. 074391562110088
Author(s):  
Luca Panzone ◽  
Alistair Ulph ◽  
Denis Hilton ◽  
Ilse Gortemaker ◽  
Ibrahim Tajudeen

The increase in global temperatures requires substantial reductions in the greenhouse emissions from consumer choices. We use an experimental incentive-compatible online supermarket to analyse the effect of a carbon-based choice architecture, which presents commodities to customers in high, medium and low carbon footprint groups, in reducing the carbon footprints of grocery baskets. We relate this choice architecture to two other policy interventions: a bonus-malus carbon tax on all grocery products; and moral goal priming, using an online banner noting the moral importance of reducing one’s carbon footprint. Participants shopped from their home in an online store containing 612 existing food products and 39 existing non-food products for which we had data on carbon footprint, over three successive weeks, with the interventions occurring in the second and third weeks. Choice architecture reduced carbon footprint significantly in the third week by reducing the proportion of choices made in the high-carbon aisle. The carbon tax reduced carbon footprint in both weeks, primarily by reducing overall spend. The goal priming banner led to a small reduction in carbon footprint in the second week only. Thus, the design of the marketplace plays an important role in achieving the policy objective of reducing greenhouse gas emissions.


Author(s):  
Min Shang ◽  
Ji Luo

The expansion of Xi’an City has caused the consumption of energy and land resources, leading to serious environmental pollution problems. For this purpose, this study was carried out to measure the carbon carrying capacity, net carbon footprint and net carbon footprint pressure index of Xi’an City, and to characterize the carbon sequestration capacity of Xi’an ecosystem, thereby laying a foundation for developing comprehensive and reasonable low-carbon development measures. This study expects to provide a reference for China to develop a low-carbon economy through Tapio decoupling principle. The decoupling relationship between CO2 and driving factors was explored through Tapio decoupling model. The time-series data was used to calculate the carbon footprint. The auto-encoder in deep learning technology was combined with the parallel algorithm in cloud computing. A general multilayer perceptron neural network realized by a parallel BP learning algorithm was proposed based on Map-Reduce on a cloud computing cluster. A partial least squares (PLS) regression model was constructed to analyze driving factors. The results show that in terms of city size, the variable importance in projection (VIP) output of the urbanization rate has a strong inhibitory effect on carbon footprint growth, and the VIP value of permanent population ranks the last; in terms of economic development, the impact of fixed asset investment and added value of the secondary industry on carbon footprint ranks third and fourth. As a result, the marginal effect of carbon footprint is greater than that of economic growth after economic growth reaches a certain stage, revealing that the driving forces and mechanisms can promote the growth of urban space.


Author(s):  
K. Ranjetha ◽  
U. Johnson Alengaram ◽  
Ahmed Mahmoud Alnahhal ◽  
S. Karthick ◽  
W.J. Wan Zurina ◽  
...  

2021 ◽  
Vol 134 (3) ◽  
pp. 3-10
Author(s):  
D. M. Grigoyeva ◽  
◽  
E. B. Fedorova ◽  

To meet the terms of the Paris Agreement, it will be necessary to restructure the world economy, make an energy transition to low-carbon development, which will subsequently affect the conventional energy sources industry and, in particular, the liquefied natural gas (LNG) sector. The article provides an overview of the prospects for reducing the carbon footprint in the gas industry. Technical, political and economic measures of decarbonization formation are given. The prospects of the natural gas export market for Russia are outlined. The classification of technologies related to carbon dioxide capture is presented. Special attention is paid to reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the LNG industry.


2022 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Xiaoqin Si ◽  
Rui Lu ◽  
Zhitong Zhao ◽  
Xiaofeng Yang ◽  
Feng Wang ◽  
...  

AbstractNatural gas is one of the foremost basic energy sources on earth. Although biological process appears as promising valorization routes to transfer biomass to sustainable methane, the recalcitrance of lignocellulosic biomass is the major limitation for the production of mixing gas to meet the natural gas composition of pipeline transportation. Here we develop a catalytic-drive approach to directly transfer solid biomass to bio-natural gas which can be suitable for the current infrastructure. A catalyst with Ni2Al3 alloy phase enables nearly complete conversion of various agricultural and forestry residues, the total carbon yield of gas products reaches up to 93% after several hours at relative low-temperature (300 degrees Celsius). And the catalyst shows powerful processing capability for the production of natural gas during thirty cycles. A low-carbon footprint is estimated by a preliminary life cycle assessment, especially for the low hydrogen pressure and non-fossil hydrogen, and technical economic analysis predicts that this process is an economically competitive production process.


2014 ◽  
Vol 1073-1076 ◽  
pp. 2734-2739
Author(s):  
Zhi Yong Tian ◽  
Feng Zheng

Research on order quantity plays an important role in logistics and supply chain (SC) whether for traditional economy objective or for low carbon objective. The paper summarizes the research framework of economic order quantity (EOQ) in brief. It also introduces and reviews the new research field carbon footprint order quantity (COQ). Comparing with the research of EOQ, it finds that the research on COQ is just beginning and the research assumptions still remain at the case of the “Square Root” era of EOQ a century ago. Based on some related literatures, the paper analyzes the effect of low carbon on social economy especially some influence factors related to order quantity. And it refers some important market forces affected by low carbon that are ignored by the literatures of COQ currently. Then the paper purposes the basic research approach of COQ. Finally, it provides several important topics of COQ for further research.


2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (8) ◽  
pp. 2955 ◽  
Author(s):  
Styliani Papatzani ◽  
Kevin Paine

In an effort to produce cost-effective and environmentally friendly cementitious binders. mainly ternary (Portland cement + limestone + pozzolanas) formulations have been investigated so far. Various proportions of constituents have been suggested, all, however, employing typical Portland cement (PC) substitution rates, as prescribed by the current codes. With the current paper a step by step methodology on developing low carbon footprint binary, ternary and quaternary cementitious binders is presented (PC replacement up to 57%). Best performing binary (60% PC and 40% LS (limestone)) and ternary formulations (60% PC, 20% LS, 20% FA (fly ash) or 43% PC, 20% LS 37% FA) were selected on the grounds of sustainability and strength development and were further optimized with the addition of silica fume. For the first time a protocol for successfully selecting and testing binders was discussed and the combined effect of highly pozzolanic constituents in low PC content formulations was assessed and a number of successful matrices were recommended. The present paper enriched the current state of the art in composite low carbon footprint cementitious binders and can serve as a basis for further enhancements by other researchers in the field.


2020 ◽  
Vol 306 ◽  
pp. 123235 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kateřina Hrůzová ◽  
Leonidas Matsakas ◽  
Anders Sand ◽  
Ulrika Rova ◽  
Paul Christakopoulos

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