Cost comparison of different monitoring, reporting and verification (MRV) systems for carbon farming in Wallonia

Details

Supervisors

Van den Broeck, Goedele

Faculty

Faculté des bioingénieurs

Degree label

Master [120] : bioingénieur en sciences agronomiques, à finalité spécialisée

Abstract

To limit global warming, storing carbon in agricultural soils is one of the solutions promoted by the European Union (Bumbiere et al., 2022). To do so, the methods of Carbon farming such as: agroforestry, no-till, direct seeding, cover crops, etc. are used to increase carbon stocks. To measure variations in soil organic carbon (SOC) stocks and, to value it on the voluntary carbon market, monitoring, reporting, and verification (MRV) systems are used. This thesis emphasizes the financial complexities and challenges associated with implementing MRV systems to monitor changes in SOC at farm level in Wallonia. It uses a cost model detailing the various MRV cost factors with data from literature, soil analysis centers and Soil Capital which is a Belgian company that helps farmers to measure and certify the carbon stored in their soils, enabling them to monetize its increase. This model highlights the main cost factors of MRV systems and compare four types of monitoring, based respectively on decision-support tools, soil models, remote sensing models and direct measurements. The use of remote sensing as a co-variable for the monitoring and the verification process in order to reduce the costs of MRV systems is also studied. Overall, the results suggest that certain factors such as labor costs and fixed costs related to reporting and verification account for a large proportion of costs, especially in the context of Wallonia, where the average farm size is 57.8 hectares (Statbel, 2022). The first type of monitoring, decision support tools, were found to be the least expensive, primarily due to lower labor costs associated with sampling and modeling. Soil models incur higher costs due to the need for detailed soil analyses and extensive modeling efforts. The third type of monitoring based on remote sensing, offers a balanced cost approach, with savings in data acquisition and processing, though it still requires ground calibration and validation to ensure accuracy. Finally, direct measurement methods demonstrated high costs, making them less interesting financially. There is a trade-off between cost and accuracy, and this trade-off must be taken into account when comparing types of monitoring (Bellasen et al, 2015). The accuracy associated with remote sensing for SOC estimation at the farm level remains a concern, limiting its standalone use for MRV system. The accuracy of the decision-support tools is not sufficient for a farm-wide assessment either. This thesis highlights the importance of choosing a cost-effective MRV system, which can be improved by the development of technologies such as remote sensing in a hybrid model, making it possible to democratize carbon farming on the scale of Walloon farms.