Strategy: national bovaer mandate
Compel cattle farmers to administer Bovaer
Bovaer is a feed supplement that reduces the methane produced by bovine digestion. A national Bovaer mandate would phase in the use of Bovaer nation-wide for all cattle. There is no obvious economic benefit (or harm) to farmers for using Bovaer, so it would be appropriate for a governing body to pay for the additive and drive adoption through regulation.
Key assumptions:
- Price of Bovaer, per year: 150.0 CAD / cattle / year
- Methane per head, per year 220.0 pound / cattle
- Methane reduction due to Bovaer: 0.375
Key predictions:
- Cost per removed/avoided tonne CO2e: 140.54 CAD / metric_ton
- Net Present CO2e @ 2.0%: -524561.292 kiloton (negative means reduction)
- Net Present Heat @ 2.0%: -395.126 exajoule (negative means reduction)
- Net Present Value @ 2.0%: -66878.968 megaCAD (negative means non-profitable)
This analysis uses the following place-holder projection of the national bovine herd size, that extrapolates a very gradual decline from the current size.
This project supposes a sigmoidal adoption curve of Bovaer, centered at year 2035.
We therefore see a dropping annual emissions of bovine methane, partly through the adoption of Bovaer, and partly due to the gradual reduction in population.
As Bovaer is adopted, the impact on Canada's emissions is modulated by the number of cattle. The size of Canada's national herd has declined over the last decade, the future is not known.
The impact on national methane emissions from so-called enteric fermentation is expected to be significant.
The impact on global atmospheric methane concentration is expected to be noticeable.
The impact on global heat forcing is too small to see on a graph of that phenomenon.
Still, a visualization of the difference in global heat forcing reveals the shape of the impact over time. The datapoints in this curve are used to compute the Net Present Heat for the project, by adding up the energy associated with each year (modulated by the future discount factor).
In other terms, the difference in global heat forcing due to a national Bovaer mandate can be quantified as a small change in (upward) temperature trajectory for the top 200m of the world's oceans.
In terms of financial modelling, the project assumes a price of Bovaer ( 150.0 CAD / cattle / year ) that remains constant for the next 200 years. At the scale of production associated with national adoption in Canada and in other countries, this is arguably an over-estimate. The curve is simply the product of the population on Bovaer with the price per head. The datapoints in this curve are used to compute the Net Present Value for the project.