What is Supply and Demand?

The Supply Side of C Cycle Science includes the activities of scientists who participate in the North American Carbon Program research, and their research activities involved in carbon cycling, sequestration and mitigation. Supply side activities range from understanding the impacts of soil conservation and tilling practices, to exploring the potential of injecting CO2 directly into deep saline aquifers.

The Demand Side of C Cycle Science represents the wide range of actors who will use the information in decisions and in formulating, implementing and enforcing other policy alternatives. Actors range from the individual farmer, local governments and corporations to nations and international organizations. The amount and type of information that demand side actors find useful varies with how they will use the information.

Supply and demand of C cycle science is not unlike supply and demand as we understand them together in economics. In simple terms, supply and demand may be graphed together. The location where the supply and demand curves meet represents a situation of optimization. We believe that a similar point of optimization exists in the supply and demand of C cycle science. In this scenario, suppliers of the science target their research on the information needs of decision makers. In turn, the decision makers make explicit their needs for C cycle science and use the information. These are what we call ‘sophisticated users’.