Algae farming for feed is essential to achieve the IPCC climate change targets

Climate change is one of the defining issues of our time. Industrialization, deforestation, and commercial agriculture have caused greenhouse gases in the atmosphere to rise to record levels. Agriculture and electricity/heat production are the two largest generators of greenhouse gases at 25% of total emissions each. Transportation fuels are also a significant contributor at 14% of total emissions.

Global Algae’s farms will significantly lower the emissions of both agriculture and transportation fuel. Global Algae’s oil and protein meal production for fuel and food creates a 94% reduction in emissions compared to petroleum fuel production and a 60% reduction in emissions compared to soy meal production. More importantly, algae farming is the only practical solution to stopping deforestation and enabling reforestation which is vital for attaining the IPCC climate change goals.

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Did You Know...

• Algae farms will capture CO2 directly from the air.

• Algae biofuel production reduces CO2 for transportation fuel consumption by 94%.

• Most IPCC identified pathways to achieving the 1.5°C target rely heavily on stopping deforestation and restoring forests that have been destroyed.

• Restoring forests may be one of our most powerful weapons in fighting climate change. Agriculture for protein and vegetable oil is the main cause of deforestation; algae farming produces the same agricultural output as conventional agriculture with 4% of the land use, so algae farms will stop and reverse deforestation while increasing agricultural output and revenue from farming.

• Building algae farms to stop deforestation and enable regrowth of tropical rainforests without loss of production or revenue could reduce carbon emissions by ~10 Gt CO2-eq /year.

• Large-scale algae farming for feed and fuel would reduce emissions by 13 to 20 gigatons of CO2 per year.

• Algae is pivotal in achieving our climate change goals.

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Algae Impacts

The International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Austria estimated that if algae were used to supply 40% of the world’s animal feed by 2050, then we would achieve our global climate change targets even if no other carbon mitigation were done (Walsh et al., “New Feed Sources Key to Ambitious Climate Targets.”, Carbon Balance and Management 2015).

 

While IPCC pathways to achieve our climate change targets almost all rely stopping and reversing deforestation. Given the increasing protein and vegetable oil demand there is no practical way to achieve this with conventional crops.  Building algae farms allows us to double our protein and oil production using 4% of the land in conventional crops.