Greenhouse gas emissions and life-cycle assessment of biocomposites from agro-residues for sustainable infrastructure development and climate change mitigation

Climate change has become the biggest challenge to humanity in the modern world. Mitigating climate change requires the reduction of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, an increase in green cover, and a gradual transition to clean energy. GHG emissions are continuously increasing due to rapidly developing industries, deforestation, infrastructure development, transportation, and energy consumption. In developing countries like India, stubble burning is a recurring problem, which emits both GHG and air pollutants. Therefore, alternate use of stubble can help fight air pollution and climate change simultaneously. The main aim of this study is to show a comparison between the GHG emitted in the burning of agricultural residues and in producing biocomposite boards from agricultural residues. Detailed calculations of GHG and air pollutants emitted from stubble burning in the Punjab and Haryana states of India are presented. Furthermore, a life-cycle assessment (LCA) is carried out to study GHG emissions of rice straw (paddy) biocomposites in the forms of particleboards and fiberboards. It is estimated that the burning of the paddy residues on the field notably results in emissions of approximately 1,577 kg CO2eq./ton of residues burned. In contrast, the production of biocomposites (cradle-to-gate) from the paddy residues leads to the emission of 407.6 kg and 437.4 kg CO2eq./ton for particleboards and fiberboards, respectively. Moreover, the LCA of the biocomposites shows the emission of 502.3 kg and 548.3 kg CO2eq./ton for particleboards and fiberboards, respectively. The production of biocomposites derived from agro-residues instead of open-field burning reduces GHG emissions by 60-70%. Also, the produced biocomposite strawboards show comparable properties and strength to the contemporary industrial strawboards and wooden boards. Therefore, producing biocomposites from agro-residues is an alternative to reduce stubble burning and GHG emissions while benefitting from the use of biocomposites in sustainable infrastructure development. These biocomposites have a high potential to substitute various synthetic products in several industries, i.e., construction, automobile, marine, and aerospace. The increased use of biocomposites significantly contributes to climate change mitigation practices while ascertaining sustainable infrastructure development.