Assessment of the Costs and Enhanced Potential for Carbon Sequestration in Soils

Publication Overview

This study assesses the quantities of additional carbon that could be sequestered in a range of soils, and the costs of sequestration. The study was carried out by a consortium led by the Australian Cooperative Research Centre for Greenhouse Accounting, including experts from Australia, the USA, Sweden and Kazakhstan.

Publication Summary

There are large regional and sub-regional variations in the technical and economic potential for carbon sequestration in soils.

For the cases considered in this study, up to 14.4 tonnes of carbon is capable of being sequestered per hectare over a 20 year period but a more typical figure is around 5t.ha-1.

For carbon prices of less than $50/t carbon ($14/t CO₂) all regions show a relatively low economic potential for soil carbon sequestration; the overall economic potential is 16% of the technical potential. At $200/t C ($55/t CO₂) 61% of the technical potential could be achieved.

In most, but not all, cases the carbon sequestration practices reduce the overall net emissions of greenhouse gases, for example CO₂ from farm machinery and N2O emissions from soils. These are taken into account in the assessment of sequestration potentials and economics