Into a cooler future with electricity generated from solar photovoltaic.

The fast-growing global cooling demand due to income growth in tropical countries necessitates substantial investments in new generation capacity. Despite the synergy between the temporal behavior of cooling demand and solar PV production, it is not clear whether the increased cooling demand will make solar PV more cost-effective or less so. We use a capacity expansion model to investigate the cost-effectiveness of investing in solar PV to meet the electricity demand linked to cooling for seven different regions under various CO2 emission targets. Solar PV plays a dominant role in meeting the additional electricity demand for cooling, and the share of solar PV in the additional generation capacity ranges from 64% to 135%. Additionally, powering electric cooling with mainly solar PV is cheaper than powering the rest of the demand. These results suggest that solar PV may comprise the backbone of electricity supply for cooling in the future electricity system.

Adherence to dietary recommendations for Swedish adults across categories of greenhouse gas emissions from food.

OBJECTIVE: To explore associations between diet-related greenhouse gas emissions (GHGE), nutrient intakes and adherence to the Nordic Nutrition Recommendations among Swedish adults. DESIGN: Diet was assessed by 4d food records in the Swedish National Dietary Survey. GHGE was estimated by linking all foods to carbon dioxide equivalents, using data from life cycle assessment studies. Participants were categorized into quartiles of energy-adjusted GHGE and differences between GHGE groups regarding nutrient intakes and adherence to nutrient recommendations were explored. SETTING: Sweden. SUBJECTS: Women (n 840) and men (n 627) aged 18-80 years. RESULTS: Differences in nutrient intakes and adherence to nutrient recommendations between GHGE groups were generally small. The dietary intake of participants with the lowest emissions was more in line with recommendations regarding protein, carbohydrates, dietary fibre and vitamin D, but further from recommendations regarding added sugar, compared with the highest GHGE group. The overall adherence to recommendations was found to be better among participants with lower emissions compared with higher emissions. Among women, 27 % in the lowest GHGE group adhered to at least twenty-three recommendations compared with only 12 % in the highest emission group. For men, the corresponding figures were 17 and 10 %, respectively. CONCLUSIONS: The study compared nutrient intakes as well as adherence to dietary recommendations for diets with different levels of GHGE from a national dietary survey. We found that participants with low-emission diets, despite higher intake of added sugar, adhered to a larger number of dietary recommendations than those with high emissions.

Is a diet low in greenhouse gas emissions a nutritious diet? - Analyses of self-selected diets in the LifeGene study.

BACKGROUND: Climate change is an urgent global issue and the food sector is a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions (GHGE). Here we study if a diet low in GHGE could be a nutritious diet compared to the Nordic Nutrition Recommendations (NNR). METHODS: The environmental impact of foods from Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) data was linked to a food frequency questionnaire (FFQ) filled out by 5,364 participants in the Swedish LifeGene study. Thereafter, we calculated the daily emission of CO2 equivalents (CO2e) as well as the intake of selected nutrients associated with vegetables, fruits, meat and dairy products. The CO2e was divided into quartiles were quartile 1 corresponds to a diet generating the lowest CO2e, and quartile 4 corresponds to a diet with the highest CO2e. RESULTS: The overall diet-related emission was 4.7 kg CO2e/day and person, corresponding to 1.7 ton CO2e/year. In general, there were only small differences in nutrient intake between groups of varying levels of CO2e, regardless if the intake was analyzed as absolute intake, energy percent or as nutrient density. Moreover, adherence to NNR was high for the group with the lowest CO2e, except for saturated fat where the intake was higher than recommended for all CO2e groups. On the other hand, only the group with the lowest CO2e fulfilled recommended intake of fiber. However, none of the CO2e groups reached the recommended intake of folate and vitamin D. CONCLUSIONS: Here we show that a self-selected diet low in CO2e provides comparable intake of nutrients as a diet high in in CO2e.

Diet-related greenhouse gas emissions assessed by a food frequency questionnaire and validated using 7-day weighed food records.

BACKGROUND: The current food system generates about 25 % of total greenhouse gas emissions (GHGE), including deforestation, and thereby substantially contributes to the warming of the earth's surface. To understand the association between food and nutrient intake and GHGE, we therefore need valid methods to assess diet-related GHGE in observational studies. METHODS: Life cycle assessment (LCA) studies assess the environmental impact of different food items. We linked LCA data expressed as kg carbon dioxide equivalents (CO2e) per kg food product to data on food intake assessed by the food frequency questionnaire (FFQ) Meal-Q and validated it against a 7-day weighed food record (WFR). 166 male and female volunteers aged 20-63 years completed Meal-Q and the WFR, and their food intake was linked to LCA data. RESULTS: The mean GHGE assessed with Meal-Q was 3.76 kg CO2e per day and person, whereas it was 5.04 kg CO2e using the WFR. The energy-adjusted and deattenuated Pearson and Spearman correlation coefficients were 0.68 and 0.70, respectively. Moreover, compared to the WFR, Meal-Q provided a good ranking ability, with 90 % of the participants classified into the same or adjacent quartile according to their daily average CO2e. The Bland-Altman plot showed an acceptable level of agreement between the two methods and the reproducibility of Meal-Q was high. CONCLUSIONS: This is the first study validating the assessment of diet-related GHGE by a questionnaire. The results suggest that Meal-Q is a useful tool for studying the link between food habits and CO2e in future epidemiological studies.

Scenario development as a basis for formulating a research program on future agriculture: a methodological approach.

To increase the awareness of society to the challenges of global food security, we developed five contrasting global and European scenarios for 2050 and used these to identify important issues for future agricultural research. Using a scenario development method known as morphological analysis, scenarios were constructed that took economic, political, technical, and environmental factors into account. With the scenarios as a starting point future challenges were discussed and research issues and questions were identified in an interactive process with stakeholders and researchers. Based on the outcome of this process, six socioeconomic and biophysical overarching challenges for future agricultural were formulated and related research issues identified. The outcome was compared with research priorities generated in five other research programs. In comparison, our research questions focus more on societal values and the role of consumers in influencing agricultural production, as well as on policy formulation and resolving conflicting goals, areas that are presently under-represented in agricultural research. The partly new and more interdisciplinary research priorities identified in Future Agriculture compared to other programs analyzed are likely a result of the methodological approach used, combining scenarios and interaction between stakeholders and researchers.