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Drawdown Georgia Project

Marilyn Brown, PhD, NAE, NAS, CEM

Regents and Brook Byers Professor of Sustainability

School of Public Policy, Georgia Institute of Technology

Tracking Climate Solutions Seminar Series:

Food and Agriculture

December 20, 2023

Welcome to the first of 5 seminars this fall semester, focusing on tracking and activation climate solutions in Georgia.

With the support and active involvement of the RCAF, I have been leading the DDGA research program since 2019.

The program is an increasingly collaborative effort engaging many universities and NGOs across the state to support the Drawdown Georgia “Movement.”

Our activities aim to enable local citizens, businesses, policymakers, and NGOs to answer the question “What can we do here in Georgia to help address climate change?” In a state that has no climate goals and no carbon reduction plans.

One of our first challenges was to measure and characterize Georgia’s carbon footprint–its NET CO2-Equivalent emissions.

How big do you think Georgia’s carbon footprint is? ANSWER: about 128 MMTCO2 in 2017. We used Sankey diagrams to illustrate emission sources and sinks, and the activities that these emissions support: E-T-I-R-C

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4 high potential Food & Ag solutions for Georgia

Reduced food waste

Composting

Conservation Agriculture

Plant forward diet

How each solution could reduce

1 MtCO2-e in Georgia:

Cost per tCO2-e (in $2021)

Source: Brown, MA. et al. (2021). “A Framework for Localizing Global Climate Solutions and their Carbon Reduction Potential,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 118 (31); https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2100008118

$-371.4

$-18.8

$2.1 to $7.3

$8.8

By reducing12% of the state’s current food waste.

By diverting 2 million tons of organic and food waste to composting from landfills.

By converting 90% of the croplands into conservation agriculture practices in Georgia.

By encouraging 25% of Georgians to adopt a plant-rich or lower-carbon-emitting diet, or by reducing statewide meat consumption by 25%.

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Agenda

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11:00 Welcome & Intro to Drawdown Georgia (Marilyn Brown)

--Please use “chat” for asking questions

--We will be recording this session; the PPT will be posted, but not the video

11:10 Drawdown Georgia's emissions tracker (Marilyn Brown and Bill Drummond)

11:20 Navigating the beta version of Drawdown Georgia's solutions tracker (Taylor Clark demos the tracker and data documentation)

11:35 Solution pages, CEJST/LIDAC + Gini coefficients (Marilyn Brown and Ryan Anthony)

11:45 Insights from Drawdown Georgia's website and blogs (Tim Sterling)

11:50 Q&A (Marilyn Brown)

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Agenda

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11:00 Welcome & Intro to Drawdown Georgia (Marilyn Brown)

--Please use “chat” for asking questions

--We will be recording this session, but will not post the video

11:10 Drawdown Georgia's emissions tracker (Marilyn Brown and Bill Drummond)

11:20 Navigating the beta version of Drawdown Georgia's solutions tracker (Taylor Clark goes off-line with a demo of the tracker and the data documentation)

11:30 Alternative mobility, biking, and EV dashboards + Gini coefficients (Marilyn Brown and Ryan Anthony)

11:45 Q&A and next steps (Marilyn Brown)

Intro to Drawdown Georgia

Since its creation in 2019, the Drawdown Georgia Research Team has expanded & diversified, & our research is making a difference�

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The Drawdown Georgia Research Team

A Research Advisory Panel was created in 2023 (more here)

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Track and Estimate Solution Impacts

Diversify

Advisors & Research Team

Track and Share GHG Emissions

Profiles

Intro to the Drawdown Georgia Research Program

Engage Business Compact Members

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Drawdown Georgia’s emissions tracker�

Marilyn Brown and Bill Drummond

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The Emissions Tracker provides a foundation for tracking solutions

Primary goal: help understand �Georgia's GHG emissions by making them as local, timely, and accessible as possible.

�

Additional goal:

Monitor progress toward net zero
To do this we must separately track both emissions and removals�

The Emissions Tracker is available at:

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Drawdown�Georgia

by the

Numbers��A free, quarterly,

county-level,

email-based,

subscription

newsletter

Go to drawdownga.org.

At the bottom of the page click on Subscribe to Emissions Data.

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http://bit.ly/3RKedCa

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Food and ag reduced their electricity-sector emissions by 14.3% between 2017 and 2021: from 2.1 to 1.8 MMtCO₂e

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At the same time:

The Southeast is taking advantage of clean tech manufacturing opportunities.

Georgia is an innovation hub for "next gen" clean energy systems. This includes electric trucks.

Clean energy manufacturing investments in the Southeast are booming.

COP28 commitment: "transition away from fossil fuels in energy systems"

Clean energy manufacturing investments (in $M) announced in the Southeast under the current administration.

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Most Georgians recycle, but few compost.

Sustainable lifestyle is a reliable predictor of clean-tech purchasing.

Consumers with sustainable lifestyle are more willing to adopt electric vehicles, rooftop solar and heat pumps.

One additional sustainable behavior, such as composting,

→ 49-65% greater odds of adoption of multiple electrification measures (Struthers, et al., forthcoming)

Probability of Household’s Willingness to Pay

Some results from an energy and climate survey of 1800 Georgia residents

We conducted an Energy and Climate Survey of about 1800 hhs to better understand the state’s views about different solutions and policies that affected them.

According to survey, majority of respondents rarely or never compost - but many aspects of their hh behavior shows a commitment to sustainability: for instance, they frequently recycle and manage their electricity usage.

And a sustainable lifestyle is an important driver of adoption and co-adoption of three electrification technologies that are key to carbon reduction - EV, Rooftop solar, and HP

-Consumers with sustainable lifestyle are more more willing to adopt three technologies

We found that a consumer committing to one additional sustainable behavior (e.g., composting) has 65% and 49% greater odds of adopting multiple technologies than no technologies or a single technology, respectively

We are now in the process of designing a Solutions Tracker to visualize the adoption and use of solutions across the state and identify new and promising solution activation opportunities.

Ultimately, by linking the Emissions and Solutions Trackers to spotlight notable shifts in emissions and connect solution activation to carbon drawdown.

This will lift up examples of climate solution implementation around the state. That is the focus of today’s seminar

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Navigating the Solutions Tracker

Taylor Clarke

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To support “peer-suation” and solution activation, we’ve developed the “beta” version of an interactive Solutions Tracker for Georgia

Sector 1

Sector 2

Sector 4

Sector 5

Sector 3, Solution 1

Sector 3, Solution “n”

Landing Page

Sector 3

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Documentation available here

Drawdown Georgia Solutions Tracker Home

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Food & Agriculture Solutions

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��

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No-Till Crop Management Solution Overview

Goal: Enable accessible, intuitive, and powerful interaction with the Solutions Tracker

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Cover Crops Solution Overview

Goal: Enable accessible, intuitive, and powerful interaction with the Solutions Tracker

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Vegan Restaurants Solution Overview

Goal: Enable accessible, intuitive, and powerful interaction with the Solutions Tracker

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Food and Agriculture: CEJST/LIDAC & Gini coefficients�

Marilyn Brown and Ryan Anthony

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Using Gini Coefficients to track progress on equity

Solution	Gini
Heat pumps	0.22
No till farming	0.34
Conservation tillage	0.35
Cover Crops	0.4
Electric vehicles	0.47
Rooftop solar	0.5

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Insights from Drawdown Georgia's "Communications Team"

Tim Sterling

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Georgia’s market leadership in essential industries complemented by a decrease in carbon emissions - insights from Drawdown Georgia's website and Digest blogs

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- Georgia supports local agriculture through initiatives like the Farmer Fund, which not only safeguards farmers' livelihoods but also promotes the production and consumption of sustainable, local foods.

- Georgia encourages its residents to adopt plant-based diets with programs like "Go Meatless Monday," aligning personal health benefits with environmental stewardship.

- the state employs cutting-edge AI technology with Startups from institutions to optimize food service operations and reduce unnecessary waste, further decreasing carbon emissions.

- Insights from Drawdown Georgia’s Digest blogs suggest that a significant reduction in food waste occurs at the consumer level. This could be due to increased awareness and education, encouraging

consumers to buy only what they need and properly store and recycle food.

- also, Georgia is scaling up composting initiatives, which likely includes community-level programs and commercial composting facilities. These efforts are pivotal in transforming organic waste into

valuable compost, thereby reducing landfill usage and greenhouse gas emissions from waste decomposition.

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Q&A and next steps

Marilyn Brown

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Questions about content

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Q1: Will the content of the Solutions Tracker be helpful?

--To policymakers, community organizations, business leaders, consumers, researchers ....?

--Which of these groups will likely be most/least interested in the data?

Q2: Do you have any solutions data that we could add to the tracker?

Q3: How useful are the Gini coefficients?

Q4: Should we link to other information?

--Where to buy and how to install solutions?

--Where, when, and why they are good for the consumer and for the environment?

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Questions about dissemination

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��

Q5: Who should we involve in future reviews of the solutions tracker?

e.g., DrawdownGA Business Compact members (N=63)?

Q6: What is the minimum documentation about the tracker data that needs to be downloadable?

--For example, here is the data documentation for Food and Agriculture�

Q7: Should we produce Drawdown GA Solutions "by the numbers"?

This PPT and both Trackers will be available here:

https://climatesolutions.gatech.edu/

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Go to Climatesolutions.gatech.edu for more about Drawdown Georgia’s research program, trackers, and the business compact

For more about Drawdown Georgia: www.drawdownga.org

Thank You!

To learn more about the roadmap of 20 solutions, go here: https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2100008118

For more about CPRG:

https://epd.georgia.gov/georgia-climate-pollution-reduction-grant

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Land Use in Georgia�(2018 64% Forested, USDA 2018)

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Georgia Forestry Commission 2016

GA Mainly Forested

~7% Pasture

Increasing Development

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Source: Derived from Princeton REPEAT Project, with calculations by

Dr. Bill Drummond, Georgia Tech

https://blog.drawdownga.org/explore-the-climate-impact-of-the-inflation-reduction-act-with-the-ghg-emissions-tracker

Funding Opportunities for Food, Ag and Forests Solutions

Inflation Reduction Act

$40 billion for agriculture, forestry and rural development

$20 billion for the

Agricultural Conservation Easement Program
Conservation Stewardship Program
Environmental Quality Incentives Program
Regional Conservation Partnership Program
Technical assistance

$14 billion for

rural development to support renewable energy and spending on biofuels infrastructure

https://www.fb.org/market-intel/whats-in-the-inflation-reduction-act-for-agriculture

Georgia Net GHG Forecasts: “Business as Usual” vs IRA

IRA=Inflation Reduction Act