Climate change: Removing CO2 could spark big rise in food prices
Technologies that can remove carbon dioxide from the air could have huge implications for future food prices, according to new research.
Scientists say that machines that remove CO2 from the air will be needed to keep the rise in global temperatures in check.
But these devices will have major impacts on energy, water and land use.
By 2050, according to this new report, food crop prices could rise more than five-fold in some parts of the world.
In the wake of the Paris climate agreement signed in 2015, researchers have tried to understand what keeping the world under a 1.5C temperature threshold would mean in practice.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reported on this question in 2018, and found that keeping below this temperature rise would require the world to reach net zero emissions by 2050 but would also need the removal and storage of large amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
One of the ideas on how to achieve this is called BECCS - bioenergy with carbon capture and storage. It means growing crops that soak up CO2, then burning them for electricity while capturing and burying the carbon that's produced.
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