Growing perennial grasses on abandoned cropland has the potential to counteract some of the negative impacts of climate change by switching to more biofuels, according to an NTNU research group.
Growing perennial grasses on abandoned cropland has the potential to counteract some of the negative impacts of climate change by switching to more biofuels, according to an NTNU research group.
Researchers consider increased use of biofuels to be an important part of the solution to achieve reduced CO2 emissions. But the production of plants for biofuels can have some unfortunate trade-offs.
Now, researchers at NTNU have come up with a scenario that would put less pressure on food production and plant and animal life.
“We can grow perennial grasses in areas that until recently were used for growing food but that are no longer used for that purpose,” explains Jan Sandstad Næss, a PhD candidate at the Industrial Ecology Programme at NTNU. These areas are usually still potentially cultivable and have the advantage that they are already connected to farms, which means that the infrastructure is in place and they are close to the markets.
Read more at: Norwegian University of Science and Technology
Photo Credit: Didgeman via Pixabay
