2024-01-19 07:06:00
What is possible for the greenhouse gas CO2, is also possible for nitrogen. With that in mind, top official Sandor Gaastra from the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate written a plea in economics journal ESB. He advocates ’emissions trading’ for nitrogen emissions, whereby farmers, industry and aviation must pay an amount for every gram of nitrogen they emit.
Gaastra borrows from climate policy. In Europe there is CO2 Since 2005, the ETS trading system, in which companies pay per tonne. The idea is that this system serves as an incentive to become more sustainable. Especially because the maximum permitted emissions are increasingly lower as 2030 and 2050 approach.
As a result, the right to emit becomes scarcer and the price can rise if total emissions do not decrease. Repeat this pressure to break the nitrogen impasse, Gaastra suggests. A price on nitrogen would give agriculture an impetus to farm smaller or more sustainably.
“It is a serious idea that could be developed,” responds Professor Jan Willem Erisman, an expert in climate and nitrogen. Because the damage caused by nitrogen to Dutch protected nature reserves is persistent, he believes the time is ripe for policy that focuses on ‘standardization and pricing’. This could be workable for farmers, an important source of nitrogen. They are already used to phosphate rights, Erisman emphasizes, so something like nitrogen rights should not be thrown at them raw.
Big question marks
Erisman does point out that there are ‘important complications’, major question marks and open ends if a nitrogen trading system is actually set up. “The effects of nitrogen emissions vary greatly per area.” That is an essential difference with CO2where a ton here has exactly the same climate effect as a ton on the other side of the Earth.
“Nitrogen emissions in an area near Natura 2000 have relatively more negative effects,” says Erisman. This could be overcome by taxing nitrogen emissions in a nature-rich region higher than elsewhere. But where are the boundaries? “And exactly which emissions does the system attribute to which company,” Erisman raises another complicated question.
Gülbahar Tezel, expert at consultancy firm PWC, also sees these ifs and buts. Yet she also does not dismiss the idea of nitrogen trading as an unfeasible trial balloon. “You would, unlike in the CO2-trade, have to work with differentiation in rates.”
Price differences
A trading system can be designed that takes into account differences per region, for example with a higher price for nitrogen emissions near vulnerable nature, says Herman Vollebergh, professor of economics and environmental policy in Tilburg. “But it will be more complex than, for example, the European ETS,” he notes. “That’s why the question is whether you should want it. Can everyone understand it?”
“I think another objection is that the focus is on nitrogen. “As a result, a farmer will invest in reducing nitrogen emissions, while the problems in agriculture are much broader. There is also too much phosphate, there is a climate problem and the water needs to be cleaner. Agriculture benefits more from integral system change than from focusing on one problem.”
Gaastra’s idea is not new. Vollebergh wrote a note about this a few years ago for the report ‘Not everything is possible’ by former minister Johan Remkes. PWC itself published advice about it years ago, but it was still seen as too wild and unrealistic a plan, says Tezel. She finds it ‘interesting’ that the idea is now being put forward again.
Erisman is familiar with a similar proposal from the Food Transition Coalition. Within that expertise group the question was: is nitrogen trading a good idea or not? “Basically you know it works. You give emitters a certain space, the bar goes down.” Just like in the ETS system for CO2 it would be conceivable that economically vulnerable groups would receive an exemption or not immediately pay the main price.
Also read:
An alternative nitrogen plan: maximum number of animals per hectare
Former nitrogen official Johan Sliggers previously launched another alternative approach to nitrogen problems. He thinks that the nitrogen problem can be tackled with a ‘livestock density standard’.
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