The cost of emission mitigation by legume crops in French agriculture

•We consider the cost of mitigation potential of legume crops in French farmlands.•Important low cost mitigation potential and even negative abatement cost in some regions are identified.•Win-win abatement could be 3% of chemical fertilizer emissions.•Legumes could abate 7% of chemical fertilizer emissions at a cost of 77 million euros.•Carbon pricing would be more efficient than a uniform regulatory requirement to promote legume implementation.

This paper considers the cost of greenhouse gas mitigation potential of legume crops in French arable systems. We construct marginal abatement cost curves to represent this mitigation or abatement potential for each department of France and provide a spatial representation of its extent. Despite some uncertainty, the measure appears to offer a significant low cost mitigation potential. We estimate that the measure could abate half of the emission reduction sought by a national plan for the reduction of chemical fertilizer emissions by 2020. This would be achieved at a loss of farmland profit of 1.2%. Considering the geographical heterogeneity of cost, we suggest that a policy implementing carbon pricing in agriculture would be more efficient than a uniform regulatory requirement for including the crop in arable systems.