SEI Agriculture, Forestry and Land Use (AFOLU) Tool

The SEI Agriculture, Forestry, and Other Land Use (AFOLU) Tool enables policymakers and planners to simulate greenhouse gas (GHG) emission pathways from agriculture, forestry, and land-use change – sectors central to national mitigation strategies in economies with substantial agricultural production and natural resources. It provides a transparent, scenario-based framework for assessing non-energy emissions across crops, livestock, soils, forestry, and land-use change. The tool supports the development of medium- and long-term emission trajectories and mitigation strategies that reflect national development priorities.

Integrated into the Low Emissions Analysis Platform (LEAP) – currently supporting more than 75 000 users worldwide – the AFOLU Tool extends LEAP’s energy and GHG planning capabilities to include non-energy emissions from key sectors, ensuring that energy and non-energy scenarios are internally consistent.

By leveraging LEAP’s user-friendly interface, scenario-building capabilities, and reporting capacity, users can explore different agricultural and land-use management strategies facilitating the prioritization of key areas for mitigation action and their impact on national emission scenarios.

The tool applies the Tier 1 and Tier 2 methodology in the 2019 Refinement to the 2006 IPCC Guidelines for National Greenhouse Gas Inventories to estimate emissions of methane (CH₄), nitrous oxide (N₂O) and carbon dioxide (CO₂), ensuring that mitigation scenarios align with national GHG inventories and transparency reporting guidelines.

For downloading the model, visit the GitHub repository. There, you can also find detailed documentation on setting up model analyses for a specific regional context.

Features

• GHG emissions estimation: The AFOLU tool facilitates the estimation of CH₄, CO₂ and N₂O emissions from:
  • Enteric fermentation (CH₄)
  • Manure management (N₂O and CH₄)
  • Soil management

• • • Direct emissions from application synthetic and organic fertilizers (application of animal manure, crop residues and grazing, N₂O)

• • • Indirect emissions from application synthetic and organic fertilizers due to atmospheric deposition, and leaching and run-off (N₂O)
  • Urea application (CO₂)
  • Rice cultivation (CH₄)
  • Wetlands emissions (CO₂ and CH₄)
  • CO₂ emissions from Forestry, other land use and land-use change (LULUCF)
• Adaptable model: The tool is distributed as a LEAP model with branches for non-energy-related GHG emissions from agriculture and LULUCF sectors based on the hypothetical country Verdania with dry an cool temperate climate and can be easily adapted to specific national geographic and climatic contexts.
• IPCC-compliant methodology: The tool employs a combination of Tier 1 and 2 methodology from the 2019 Refinement to the 2006 IPCC Guidelines for National Greenhouse Gas Inventories, ensuring alignment with national GHG inventories and UN transparency reporting guidelines
• Scenario-building capabilities: Leveraging LEAP’s advanced scenario-building features, users can explore various management strategies and prioritize key areas for mitigation action.