Saint Lucia's Sources of N2O Emissions
Key Insights
Agricultural Influence on Emissions
Saint Lucia's N₂O emissions have been significantly influenced by agricultural practices, particularly from the mid-20th century onwards. The introduction of banana cultivation in the 1950s marked a shift in agricultural practices, likely contributing to increased N₂O emissions due to fertilizer use. This is reflected in the data, where agriculture has consistently been a major source of N₂O emissions, peaking in the late 20th century before stabilizing in recent decades.
Energy and Industrial Developments
The establishment of an oil terminal in 1979 and the growth of the tourism industry in the 1990s contributed to increased energy consumption and emissions. However, N₂O emissions from energy sources have remained relatively low compared to agriculture. The adoption of renewable energy initiatives in the early 21st century aimed to mitigate these emissions, although their impact on N₂O levels is less pronounced.
Recent Trends and Environmental Policies
In recent years, Saint Lucia has made efforts to address environmental concerns, such as the 2015 ban on Styrofoam and plastics, which aimed to reduce waste-related emissions. The COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 temporarily reduced emissions due to decreased economic activity. Despite these efforts, the overall trend in N₂O emissions has shown a slight increase in recent decades, with agriculture remaining the dominant source. The data highlights the ongoing challenge of balancing economic development with environmental sustainability.
Background
The chart shows a national breakdown by source of the yearly nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions from human activities and processes, expressed as weight in megatonnes (Mt). Human-induced emissions are the main driver of the increasing atmospheric nitrous oxide that is warming our planet. The sources of human nitrous oxide emissions are
- Agriculture
- Energy
- Industry
- Waste
- Other
Agriculture
Emissions related to agriculture are mainly from the use of synthetic fertilizers and manure management.
Synthetic fertilizer, used for agricultural processes, contains a lot of nitrogen. That nitrogen in the soil reacts and causes considerable N2O emissions. The use of excess fertilizer, meaning more fertilizer than the plants can use to grow, causes even higher relative emissions. Applying the right amount of fertilizer at the right time can reduce N2O emissions. There are many technical solutions to reduce emissions while keeping, or even increasing, agricultural yields.
When manure is left on the field or otherwise managed in dry processes, it emits considerable amounts of nitrous oxide. Manure can be managed by wet processes, which reduces nitrous oxide emissions but increases methane emissions. Some technical solutions focus on modifying the animal feed to reduce the nitrogen in the manure, thereby reducing nitrous oxide emissions.
Energy, Industry, Waste, and Other
All non-agricultural categories together have much lower emissions than agricultural emissions alone.
N2O emissions related to energy are almost all from the combustion of fossil fuels. For example, the combustion of fossil fuels in power plants, cars, and airplanes not only causes CO2 emissions but also emits nitrous oxide (N2O). Any advances to reducing fossil fuel dependency will thus also reduce nitrous oxide emissions.
Most industry-related emissions are from the chemical industry for producing fertilizer, nylon, and similar products. Technologies are available to reduce emissions in these processes.
Nitrous oxide emissions from waste come from, for example, wastewater treatment and landfills.
Wikipedia: Nitrous oxideIPCC: AR6, 5.16 Anthropogenic nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions
Units and Measures
N2O emissions are expressed in the total weight in megatonnes per year. 1 Megatonne is equal to 1 million tonnes.
Wikipedia: MegatonneWikipedia: Global warming potential
About the Data
The last available year in all the emission datasets is 2023. N2O emissions come from the PRIMAP-Hist dataset. It is a rich dataset that combines several published sources to create a historical emissions time series for various greenhouse gases.
The Key Insights paragraph was generated using a large language model (LLM) using a structured approach to improve the accuracy. This included separating the context generation from the interpretation and narrative.
Data Sources
PRIMAP-hist The PRIMAP-hist national historical emissions time series (1750-2023)
Update cycle: Every few monthsDelay: Less than 1 yearCredits: Gütschow, Johannes; Busch, Daniel; Pflüger, Mika (2024): The PRIMAP-hist national historical emissions time series (1750-2023) v2.6. Zenodo.