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1.INTRODUCTIONICT has been widely applied, it improves efficiency of many traditional industries and reduces energy use and emission. As a main part of the national economy, agriculture also benefits from ICTs. For exampls, ICTs can stabilize or increase crop yield while using less fertilizer and water. But few researchers have reported the enablement effect of ICTs in these agricultural scenarioes. China Telecom, one of the largest telecom operators in China, provides a large variety of ICTs. Thus, we conduct a survey of agricultural ICTs from Telecom China in order to quantify the CO2 emission reduction effect in the agricultural sector, and forecast their future potential. In 2018, the GSMA team estimated that ICTs promoted the transformation of agricultural informatization, and 54.9Mt of carbon dioxide emission was reduced[1]. It also estimated the reduced carbon emissions by recognizing different degrees of agricultural informatization in different regions of the world. The SMARTer 2020 team predicted a total emission reduction potential of 9.1GtCO2e for ICT applications in six fields: electricity, transportation, manufacturing, agriculture, construction, services, and consumption, which is 7 times its own emissions[2]. The SMARTer2030 team calculated the emission reductions in different industry sectors enabled by ICTs around the world. By 2030, the emission reduction potential in the agricultural sector is reported be about 2.0Gt of carbon dioxide, accounting for 16.53% of the total carbon reduction[3]. GeSI also concluded that China’s ICT use can achieve a 22% -65% emission reduction in the future agricultural sector[4]. Zhu and Wang studied influcing factors of agricultural CO2e emissions, and found that the level of mechanization, the improvement of fertilizer and irrigation can reduce emissions of crop management [5]. However, existing literatures only discussed emission reduction of ICT-enabled planting in agriculture, while our paper also examines the use of ICT in fisheries and livestock. 2.METHODOLOGY AND CASE SELECTION2.1GHG Protocol for Project AccountingTo estimate the emission reduction of ICT-enabled agricultural cases, the life cycle analysis (LCA) and GHG Protocol for Project Account are adopted in this paper[6]. Based on GHG Protocol, ISO also developed ISO 14064-2 for project accounting[7]. The GHG protocol issued by the World Resources Institute (WRI) and the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) is a welknown principle, which includes GHG Protocol for Project Accounting and GHG Protocol for Corporate Accounting. ICT use cases in agriculure are defined as individual projects. By comparing emission changes between baseline and the reporting period, emission reduction can be calculated. Yang et al. adopted GHG Protocol method to estimate ICT-enabled low carbon solutions from China Mobile, but ICT use cases in agriculture were not discussed yet [8]. How to define the baseline is the key of the calculation. Two methods are adopted, that is Before-and-after comparison (BAC) and With-and-without comparison (WOC).
2.2Case SelectionThree ICT use cases in agriculture are selected in order to cover typical main ICT-enabled scenarios. these are smart crop management, smart pasture and smart aquaculture as Table 1 shows. Table 1.Field classification and selected ICT smart agriculture application scenarios
3.CALCULATION AND ANALYSIS3.1Emission Reduction Calculation3.1.1Smart crop management (CM)Smart crop management mainly refers to the digital management of planting areas by using 5G, Internet of Things, and even cloud computing and big data technologies. The dynamic data collection of climate, soil, crops and pests is realized by setting up sensors, and feeding of water and fertilizer can be optimized by intelligent controlers. Peasants can review important data and monitor by a real time manner on their smart phones. The automatical system of feeding water and fertilizer to crops can realize energy saving and emission reduction by several ways. First, the use of chemical fertilizers can be reduced through lean fertilization technology, while improving the nutrient absorption efficiency of crops, reducing the waste of fertilizers, thereby reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Secondly, intelligent irrigation technology can achieve precise watering, reduce water consumption, prevent soil loss and land drought, and increase the effect of soil conservation. Finally, the water-and-fertilizer-integrated automated system can collect data and is driven by models, which can optimize agricultural production. In the field survey, based on the carbon reduction effect and planting range, five kinds of crops with mature informatization and wide planting ranges were selected to estimate the ICT-enabled emission reduction effect, namely pericarpium citri reticulatae, pineapple, orchid, orange and rice. Emission reduction of smart CM = farm area * average water consumption intensity * water saving ratio * emission coefficient of agricultural water + farm area * average fertilizer use intensity * fertilizer saving ratio * emission coefficient of fertilizer production. Table 2.Annual emission reduction from water saving in smart crop management for a pilot project
Note: Mu is a Chinese area unit and 100 mu is equal to 6.66 hectares. Table 3.Annual emission reduction of fertilizer saved in crop management for a pilot project
Note: Mu is a Chinese area unit and 100 mu is equal to 6.66 hectares. 3.1.2Smart aquaculture (SAq)Smart aquaculture is a new benchmark of modern aquaculture based on 5G, such as the Internet of Things (IoT), big data, and artificial intelligence (AI). It collects and analyzes environment data under water, such as water quality, temperature, and dissolved oxygen, as well as production data, such as bait feeding and fish activities, in order to realize intelligent and fine management. After the digital fish farming system is applied, functions such as continuious monitoring of the water environment, fine oxygenation of water areas, precise feeding, health management and remote control of fisheries can be realized. Among these activities, adding oxygen to water properly has a much more obvious effect of energy saving and emission reduction. The activity of adding oxygen into water need to monitor the water quality online and optimally control the operation of an aerator, which greatly reduces unnecessary waste of motors’ energy. Emission reduction of SAq = application area of SAq * (annual power consumption intensity of oxygen enhancement before SAq applies - annual power consumption intensity of oxygen enhancement after SAq applies) * emission factor of power grid Table 4.Calculation process of emission reduction in smart aquaculture
Note: Mu is a Chinese area unit and 100 mu is equal to 6.66 hectares. 3.1.3Smart pasture (SPa)Smart pasture is an ICT application for animal husbandry management based on 5G, IoT, big data and AI. It realizes the automation and intelligence of animal husbandry by collecting and analyzing data of environment, feed nutrition and animal behavior in the pasture. Smart pasture can also realize animal intelligent feeding, animal disease monitoring and prevention, animal estrus monitoring, and pasture environmental management. By these functions, efficient feeding and timely breeding can be realized, the period before slaughtering can be reduced, meat yield of the pasture can be improved. Besides, by using ICT to improve breeding of milk cows, the milk production has been greatly improved. If the ICT was not applied, the farm had to increase the keeping number of dairy cows to maintain the same output, which meaned more emissions would be emited. Table 5.Emission reduction estimation of smart milk cow management
Table 6.Emission reduction estimation of smart beef cattle management
3.2ICT-enabled Emission Reduction Potential of Smart AgricultureAgriculture is devided into four scenarios in this paper. Thus, in order to further study the emission reduction potential of ICT usage in the whole agricultural sector, we can multiply emission reduction intensity of an ICT pilot use case and its national potential usage scale. Table 7.The application scope of smart agriculture throughout China
Note: Smart crops management here only envolves data of national-wide rice planting The CO2 emissions generated by China’s agricultural sector account for approximately 7% of the annual national total amount. However, the 2022 Carbon Dioxide Emissions Report released by the International Energy Agency (IEA) shows that China’s total carbon emissions in 2022 were approximately 11477 million tons, and it is estimated that China’s agricultural industry’s carbon dioxide emissions in 2022 were approximately 803.39 million tons proportionally. Assuming the comprehensive promotion of ICTs in smart crop management, smart aquaculture and smart pastures nationwide, it is expected that the reduced CO2 emissions will account for approximately 23.60% of the total emissions of the agriculture sector. This also shows that the smart agriculture enabled by ICTs has a great potential in the field of energy conservation and emission reduction, and is one of the important ways for the future agricultural industry to achieve carbon neutrality. 4.CONCLUSION AND SUBSEQUENT RESEARCHThis article surveyed four typical agricultural ICT use cases (smart crop management, smart aquaculture and smart pasture etc.) provided by China Telecom and adopted GHG Protocol method to calculate the CO2 emission reduction potential of ICT-enabled smart agriculture. And two methods for estimating baselines are put forward. Results show that ICT-enabled smart agriculture can bring about approximately 23% CO2 emission reduction in a nationwide manner. However, it should be noted that the estimation is only roughly estimated. Due to certain differences in natural environmental conditions across China, there may be regional differences in CO2 reduction potential among different regions. And the regional differences in carbon reduction can be further studied. REFERENCESGSMA,
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