During her PhD studies, Luiza Martins Karpavicius investigated the transaction costs involved in land-based carbon sequestration, such as administrative expenses and the costs of monitoring and verifying carbon storage. Her research, based on three studies, highlights the role played by these costs in the economic feasibility of carbon sequestration policies and practices in agriculture and forestry.

The first study revealed wide variations in transaction costs across projects, driven by factors like project size and policy instrument context. The second study showed that, in Denmark, ignoring farmers’ private transaction costs for research and planning may visibly overestimates the total carbon sequestration achieved with agri-environmental support to cover cropping. Finally, the third study compared subsidy schemes focusing on rewarding sequestration practices or sequestration outcomes, explicitly introducing the costs of monitoring sequestration outcomes in case of the latter. Together, the findings from the PhD thesis provide valuable insights for designing and implementing cost-effective climate policies in the land use sector.

The PhD study was completed at Department of Environmental Sciences, Section for Environmental Social Science and Geography, Faculty of Technical Sciences, Aarhus University.

This summary was prepared by the PhD student.

Time: Wednesday, 24 September 2025 at 1 pm.
Place: Roskilde A1.20 Smørhullet, Department of Environmental Sciences, Aarhus University, Frederiksborg vej 2999, Risø Campus, 4000 Roskilde, Denmark.
Title of PhD thesis: Empirical Essays on the Transaction Costs of Land Use Carbon Sequestration
Contact information: Luiza Martins Karpavicius, e-mail: luiza.karpavicius@envs.au.dk, tel.: +45 91992821
Members of the assessment committee:
Associate professor Brian H. Jacobsen, Department of Food and Resource Economics (IFRO), University of Copenhagen, Denmark
Associate professor Mark Brady, Department of Economics, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences & Centre for Environmental and Climate Research, Lund University, Sweden
Professor Matthias Ketzel (chair), Department of Environmental Sciences, Aarhus University, Denmark
Main supervisor:
Professor Katarina Elofsson, Department of Environmental Sciences, Aarhus University, Denmark
Co-supervisor:
Dr. Shiyu Yan, Department of Environmental Sciences, Aarhus University, Denmark
Language: The PhD dissertation will be defended in English

The defence is public.
The PhD thesis is available for reading at the Graduate School of Technical Sciences/GSTS, Ny Munkegade 120, building 1521, 8000 Aarhus C.