Agroalimentación 0 Emisiones: Asturias Mission for reducing emissions and greenhouse gases in the agri-food value chain

The project was framed within the Scientific Mission of the Principality of Asturias for the reduction of emissions and greenhouse gases, primarily developing the improvement area of the circular economy, understood as reuse, as a by-product, and as use of the industrial process.

The objectives of the consortium were:

• Reduce, reuse, and recover the waste from agri-food and forestry production from a circularity perspective.
• Turn the by-products and waste of agri-food production into resources that can be used in other production processes.
• Reduce greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide and methane, in the agri-food value chain.
• Develop more sustainable and resilient agri-food and forestry systems, reducing the use of natural resources and the input of chemical fertilizers, pesticides, antibiotics, and other inputs, with better soil management.
• Strengthen the capacity for carbon dioxide absorption and storage and the reuse of waste in agricultural and forestry production.
• Consider agricultural, forest, and idle land as carbon dioxide sinks.

The consortium's research and innovation lines also contributed indirectly to other improvement areas of the Scientific Mission, mainly in the use of waste-derived fuels and municipal solid waste to obtain hydrogen, and in the production of hydrogen from renewable energy through biomass gasification.

CTIC's participation focused mainly on developing the inventory and observatory of waste, emissions, and removals of the Principality of Asturias, a pilot cutting across the project's three lines of action. In a first phase, in coordination with the other partners, the sources of greenhouse gas emissions and removals and of waste production in the regional agri-food value chain were identified and inventoried, quantifying their volume where data were available. In a second phase, the observatory's support tool was developed, designed to collect the information generated by the consortium and present it through a visualization of the state of the region. The inventory also incorporated carbon dioxide removals by green areas, thus offering a complete picture of the emissions balance.