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Policy-enabled stabilization of nitrous oxide emissions from livestock production in China over 1978–2017

Nature Food volume 3, pages 356–366 (2022)Cite this article

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Abstract

Mitigating livestock-related nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions is key for China to meet its 2060 carbon neutrality target. Here we present a comprehensive analysis of the magnitude, spatiotemporal variation and drivers of Chinese livestock N2O emissions from 1978 to 2017. We developed scenarios to explore emissions mitigation potential and associated marginal abatement costs and social benefits. The average growth rate of China’s livestock N2O emissions increased by 4.6% per year through 2006, falling sharply over 2007–2015 and gradually declining in 2017 due to a slowdown in population and meat-consumption growth rates. We estimate the technical mitigation potential of livestock N2O emissions in 2030 to be 7–21% (or 23.1–70.9 Gg N2O), with implementation costs of US$5.5 billion to US$6.0 billion. Priority regions for intervention were identified in the North China Plain, Northeast Plain and Lianghu Plain. Among mitigation opportunities, anaerobic digestion offers the greatest social benefit, while low crude protein feed is the most cost-effective option.

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Fig. 1: Trends of N2O emissions.
Fig. 2: Spatial and temporal distribution of N2O emissions from livestock production in China’s six agronomic regions between 1978 and 2017.
Fig. 3: Contribution of each driver to the change in Chinese N2O emissions from livestock production in the periods 1978–1996, 1996–2006 and 2006–2017.
Fig. 4: N2O emissions from Chinese livestock production in 2030 under different scenarios.

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Data availability

The data that support the findings of this study are available within the article and its supplementary information files, or are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request. Source data are provided with this paper.

Code availability

The spatial analysis was run in ArcGIS v.10.2 and the statistical analysis was completed in SPSS v.13.0. All code is available upon request.

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Acknowledgements

This study was supported by the Strategic Priority Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (grant number XDA20100104 to Y.Z.), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant numbers 41905079 to P.X. and 51961125203 and 92047302 to Y.Z.) and California Strategic Growth Council Climate Change Research Program (to B.Z.H.). The effort of A.C. was partly supported by a US Department of Energy grant (DE-SC0022074).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Environmental Science and Engineering, Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen, China

    Peng Xu, Yi Zheng, Bin Li, Geng Li, Haiyan Lu, Feng Quan & Shiyao Hu

  2. Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and Department of Global Development, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA

    Benjamin Z. Houlton

  3. State Environmental Protection Key Laboratory of Integrated Surface Water–Groundwater Pollution Control, School of Environmental Science and Engineering, Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen, China

    Yi Zheng

  4. Shenzhen Municipal Engineering Lab of Environmental IoT Technologies, Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen, China

    Yi Zheng

  5. Sino-France Institute of Earth Systems Science, Laboratory for Earth Surface Processes, College of Urban and Environmental Sciences, Peking University, Beijing, China

    Feng Zhou

  6. Key Laboratory of Agricultural Water Resources, Hebei Key Laboratory of Soil Ecology, Center for Agricultural Resources Research, Institute of Genetic and Developmental Biology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shijiazhuang, China

    Lin Ma

  7. College of Animal Science and Technology, Hunan Agricultural University, Changsha, China

    Xu Liu

  8. Division of Environment and Sustainability, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Hong Kong, China

    Geng Li

  9. Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Science, Function Hub, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (Guangzhou), Guangzhou, China

    Geng Li

  10. Department of Biology and Graduate Degree Program in Ecology, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO, USA

    Anping Chen

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Contributions

P.X. and Y.Z. designed the study. P.X. performed the research. P.X. and Y.Z. analysed the data. P.X., G.L., B.L., H.L., F.Q. and S.H. wrote the initial draft of the paper. B.Z.H., F.Z., L.M., X.L. and A.C. reviewed and revised the manuscript. All authors contributed to the discussion and interpretation of the results.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Yi Zheng.

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Nature Food thanks Sujong Jeong, Wenbin Wu and Xin Zhang for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Extended data

Extended Data Fig. 1 Changes in the relative contributions of various animals to N2O emissions from the livestock production in China for the period 1978–2017.

Changes in the relative contributions of various animals to N2O emissions from the livestock production in China for the period 1978–2017.

Source data

Extended Data Fig. 2 Changes in livestock production and emission intensities.

Changes in livestock production and emission intensities. (a) The livestock population and gross economic value of livestock production scales are on the left axis; the animal protein production scale is on the right axis. (b) N2O emission intensity of the Chinese livestock production sector (left axis) and livestock products (right axis).

Source data

Extended Data Fig. 3 Reductions in N2O emissions from the livestock production in China in 2030 under five technical mitigation scenario alternatives.

Reductions in N2O emissions from the livestock production in China in 2030 under five technical mitigation scenario alternatives. LCP represents low crude protein (LCP) feed; AD represents anaerobic digestion; CPO represents composting; CBI represents the combination of AD and composting.

Source data

Extended Data Fig. 4 Comparison of the relative contributions of selected sources to the total N2O emissions from the livestock production.

Comparison of the relative contributions of selected sources to the total N2O emissions from the livestock production. (a) China in 2017 in this study, (b) United States (USA) in 2017 (ref. 12), and (c) European Union (EU-27) in 2017 (ref. 45).

Source data

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Supplementary Methods and Results, Figs. 1–4 and Tables 1–5.

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Xu, P., Houlton, B.Z., Zheng, Y. et al. Policy-enabled stabilization of nitrous oxide emissions from livestock production in China over 1978–2017. Nat Food 3, 356–366 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43016-022-00513-y

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