- Title
- Swedish food system transformations: Rethinking biogas transport logistics to adapt to localized agriculture
- Creator
- Metson, Geneviève S.; Sundblad, Anton; Feiz, Roozbeh; Quttineh, Nils-Hassan; Mohr, Steve
- Relation
- Sustainable Production and Consumption Vol. 29, Issue January 2022, p. 370-386
- Publisher Link
- http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.spc.2021.10.019
- Publisher
- Elsevier
- Resource Type
- journal article
- Date
- 2022
- Description
- Ensuring future food and energy security will require large changes in consumption and production patterns, including enhanced animal and human excreta recycling. Although these shifts are considered in many scenario studies, their implications on the logistical requirements for effective recycling are rarely analysed. Here we translated two existing stakeholder co-designed food system scenarios for Sweden to 5 x 5 km resolution maps of animals, crops, and humans. We used optimization modelling to identify biogas plant locations to minimize transport costs and maximize nutrient reuse. We then compared scenarios, including full recycling under current landscape configuration, through Life Cycle Assessment. The reduction in meat consumption and imported food in both co-designed scenarios, by definition, led to less nutrients available in manure for recycling back on cropland, and less material available for digestion. Less excreta meant lower national benefits, for example 50% less greenhouse gas emissions savings in the most divergent scenario. However on a per transport basis the benefits of recycling were more important: recycling remained a net financial benefit even if transport costs were to increase. Although fewer biogas plant locations were necessary (184 and 228 for alternative futures, vs 236 under current conditions) to process human and animal excreta, the regional clustering of locations did not change substantially across scenarios. Regions such as Skåne and Västra Götaland consistently required the most biogas plant locations across scenarios. Focusing early construction investments in these regions would be resilient to a large array of food system futures. Our spatially-explicit open access scenario maps can be used to explore logistics for such planning, and explore the impact of landscape configuration on other sustainability priority areas.
- Subject
- circular economy; nitrogen; Sustainable Development Goals; phosphorus; potassium; geospatial analysis; future scenarios; SDG 7; SDG 9; SDG 12; SDG 13
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1472888
- Identifier
- uon:48941
- Identifier
- ISSN:2352-5509
- Rights
- © 2021 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of Institution of Chemical Engineers. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)
- Language
- eng
- Full Text
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Goal 12: Responsible Consumption and Production
Goal 9: Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure
Goal 13: Climate Change
Goal 7: Ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy
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