Achieving negative emissions with BECCS (bioenergy with carbon capture and storage) in the power sector: New insights from the TIAM-FR (TIMES Integrated Assessment Model France) model

The Value of Bioenergy Sequestration

Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS), along with Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS), feature heavily in climate mitigation scenarios. Nevertheless, the technologies remain controversial within the broader mitigation discourse, in part for their potential to excuse delay in more ambitious emissions reductions in the short term. Sweden has included BECCS and CCS as proposed “supplementary measures” to enable the country to meet its ambitious target of achieving net negative emissions by 2045. Hajer’s Argumentative Approach to Discourse Analysis is applied to Swedish parliamentary speeches, motions, and written questions and answers, to uncover the storylines and attendant assumptions constituting Swedish policy deliberation regarding CCS and BECCS. This study finds that by problematizing climate change as an issue of emissions, actors position CCS and BECCS within a dominant neoliberal discourse and characterize them as tools to facilitate a green transition centering on industrial and economic competitiveness. This discourse lacks detail, and risks delay by oversimplifying the needs and requirements for CCS and BECCS deployment. Meanwhile, a CCS-critical discourse acknowledges the need for negative emissions but challenges storylines portraying the technology as inexpensive or easy to deploy rapidly. If pursued, this discourse could serve to sharpen the debate about the technologies and bring planning in line with aspirations, helping to avert risks of delay.

Opportunities for application of BECCS in the Australian power sector

Bio-energy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) is a key negative emissions technology that has the potential to substantially reduce atmospheric CO2 concentration and limit global warming to below 2°C. Among the available negative emission technologies, BECCS is projected to produce 50 TWh/yr of power generation, thereby removing 47 MtCO2/yr in 2050 in the UK, as suggested by the Committee for Climate Change. Important indicators when considering the deployment of BECCS is to ensure BECCS has 1) a negative carbon balance, 2) a positive energy balance, and 3) and does not compete for food for agricultural land use. Recovering energy from waste wood and municipal solid waste (MSW) has the potential to generate electricity, deliver negative emissions, whilst minimising land use and biomass import. This study optimises the design of a UK BECCS value chain with a mixed integer linear programming (MILP) model. The fuels considered for this work include MSW derived fuel, waste wood (grade A and B), indigenous miscanthus, indigenous poplar, and imported pine pellets from the US. CO2 emissions and costs associated with the entire supply chain are explicitly accounted for. The BECCS supply chain optimisation results indicate that MSW and waste wood are consumed as the basic material supplies, which can provide low-cost alternative to imported biomass. By using MSW and waste wood, the total system cost would be reduced ~12%. Miscanthus is preferred over poplar as the virgin biomass supply and the farms are mostly located in the south of the UK, which has higher production yield and land availability. The selection of BECCS plant locations tends to be near cities where waste wood and MSW are more readily available and then expand to port area. Biomass feedstock derived from wastes are therefore likely to play an important role in BECCS deployment in the UK, in both biomass supply and locations of BECCS facilities.

Rising levels of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are still a global concern. International organizations have indicated that to meet the 2 °C thresholds until 2100, carbon-negative technologies must be employed. Bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) is one of the options to offer reduced fossil-based CO2 emissions from a variety of industries and sectors. This promises the significant potential to remove atmospheric CO2 at a comparable cost to conventional carbon capture and storage technologies while producing energy. From a technical standpoint, BECCS is referred to a group of technologies utilized to produce energy from biomass and storing CO2 simultaneously. Substituting fossil fuels with biomass offers the possibility to utilize the carbon in the atmosphere for power generation. While BECCS might be a promising technology in theory, it has its own pros and cons which has made it one of the most controversial technologies to fight climate change. This chapter aims to investigate the advantages and the shortcomings of BECCS, from carbon removal efficiency and economic feasibility to scale-up issues associated with it. The urgency of the climate issues has created a political drive for environmental technologies like BECCS which might not be well-established. Also, the public perception of such technologies could promote or hinder their deployment in various parts of the globe. In addition, the deployment of BECCS cannot take place in isolation, and detailed investigations addressing the undeniable links within the food-water-energy-climate nexus will be required.KeywordsCarbon capture and storage (CCS)BioenergyBiomassNexus

Can bioenergy with carbon capture and storage deliver negative emissions? A critical review of life cycle assessment

To reach the reduced carbon emission targets proposed by the Paris agreement, one of the widely proposed decarbonizing strategies, referred to as negative emissions technologies (NETs), is the production and combustion of bioenergy crops in conjunction with carbon capture and storage (BECCS). However, concerns have been increasingly raised that relying on the potential of BECCS to achieve negative emissions could result in delayed reductions in gross CO2 emissions, with consequent high risk of overshooting global temperature targets. We focus on two particular issues: the carbon efficiency and payback time of bioenergy use in BECCS and the potential constraints on the supply of bioenergy. The simplistic vision of BECCS is that 1tonne of CO2 captured in the growth of biomass equates to 1tonne of CO2 sequestered geologically, but this cannot be the case as CO2 is emitted by variable amounts during the lifecycle from crop establishment to sequestration below ground in geological formations. The deployment of BECCS is ultimately reliant on the availability of sufficient, sustainably sourced, biomass. The two most important factors determining this supply are land availability and land productivity. The upper bounds of the area estimates required correspond to more than the world's harvested land for cereal production. To achieve these estimates of biomass availability requires the rapid evolution of a multitude of technological, social, political and economic factors. Here, we question whether, because of the limited sustainable supply of biomass, BECCS should continue to be considered the dominant NET in IPCC and other scenarios achieving the Paris targets, or should it be deemed no longer fit for purpose?

Moving toward Net-Zero Emissions Requires New Alliances for Carbon Dioxide Removal

Climate change poses an imminent threat, necessitating innovative and sustainable strategies for mitigation. This paper explores the potential of Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS) as a promising approach. The introductory section sets the stage by elucidating the urgency of climate action. The background section surveys existing climate mitigation strategies, introducing bioenergy and carbon capture technologies. The paper delves into the distinctive contributions of bioenergy to carbon emission reduction and assesses the viability of various bioenergy sources. Simultaneously, the discussion on Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) provides insight into the technological aspects of carbon capture. An integral focus is the integration of bioenergy and carbon capture technologies in BECCS, exploring synergies that enhance their combined efficacy. Real-world examples and case studies illustrate successful BECCS projects. Environmental and social impacts are critically examined, considering sustainability and ethical dimensions. Challenges and criticisms associated with BECCS are discussed comprehensively, addressing concerns and proposing potential solutions. The paper concludes by outlining future prospects for BECCS, offering recommendations for policymakers and stakeholders. It also suggests avenues for further research and development in this evolving field. Keywords: Bioenergy, Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS), Climate Mitigation.

Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS) features heavily in the energy scenarios designed to meet the Paris Agreement targets, but the models used to generate these scenarios do not address environmental and social implications of BECCS at the regional scale. We integrate ecosystem service values into a land‐use optimization tool to determine the favourability of six potential UK locations for a 500 MW BECCS power plant operating on local biomass resources. Annually, each BECCS plant requires 2.33 Mt of biomass and generates 2.99 Mt CO2of negative emissions and 3.72 TWh of electricity. We make three important discoveries: (a) the impacts of BECCS on ecosystem services are spatially discrete, with the most favourable locations for UK BECCS identified at Drax and Easington, where net annual welfare values (from the basket of ecosystems services quantified) of £39 and £25 million were generated, respectively, with notably lower annual welfare values at Barrow (−£6 million) and Thames (£2 million); (b) larger BECCS deployment beyond 500 MW reduces net social welfare values, with a 1 GW BECCS plant at Drax generating a net annual welfare value of £19 million (a 50% decline compared with the 500 MW deployment), and a welfare loss at all other sites; (c) BECCS can be deployed to generate net welfare gains, but trade‐offs and co‐benefits between ecosystem services are highly site and context specific, and these landscape‐scale, site‐specific impacts should be central to future BECCS policy developments. For the United Kingdom, meeting the Paris Agreement targets through reliance on BECCS requires over 1 GW at each of the six locations considered here and is likely, therefore, to result in a significant welfare loss. This implies that an increased number of smaller BECCS deployments will be needed to ensure a win–win for energy, negative emissions and ecosystem services.

A Sustainability Framework for Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS) Technologies

Evolution patterns of bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) from a science mapping perspective

Most mitigation scenarios compatible with a likely change of holding global warming well below 2 °C rely on negative emissions technologies (NETs). According to the integrated assessment models (IAMs) used to produce mitigation scenarios for the IPCC reports, the NET with the greatest potential to achieve negative emissions is bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS). Crucial questions arise about where the enormous quantities of biomass needed according to the IAM scenarios could feasibly be produced in a sustainable manner. Africa is attractive in the context of BECCS because of large areas that could contribute biomass energy and indications of substantial underground CO2 storage capacities. However, estimates of large biomass availability in Africa are usually based on highly aggregated datasets, and only a few studies explore future challenges or barriers for BECCS in any detail. Based on previous research and literature, this paper analyses the pre-conditions for BECCS in Tanzania by studying what we argue are the applications of BECCS, or the components of the BECCS chain, that are most feasible in the country, namely (1) as applied to domestic sugarcane-based energy production (bioethanol), and (2) with Tanzania in a producer and re-growth role in an international BECCS chain, supplying biomass or biofuels for export to developed countries. The review reveals that a prerequisite for both options is either the existence of a functional market for emissions trading and selling, making negative emissions a viable commercial investment, or sustained investment through aid programmes. Also, historically, an important barrier to the development of production capacity of liquid biofuels for export purposes has been given by ethical dilemmas following in the wake of demand for land to facilitate production of biomass, such as sugarcane and jatropha. In these cases, conflicts over access to land and mismanagement have been more of a rule than an exception. Increased production volumes of solid biomass for export to operations that demand bioenergy, be it with or without a CCS component, is likely to give rise to similar conflicts. While BECCS may well play an important role in reducing emissions in countries with high capacity to act combined with existing large point sources of biogenic CO2 emissions, it seems prudent to proceed with utmost caution when implicating BECCS deployment in least developed countries, like Tanzania.The paper argues that negative BECCS-related emissions from Tanzania should not be assumed in global climate mitigation scenarios.

Bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) based on purpose‐grown lignocellulosic crops can provide negative CO2 emissions to mitigate climate change, but its land requirements present a threat to biodiversity. Here, we analyse the implications of crop‐based BECCS for global terrestrial vertebrate species richness, considering both the land‐use change (LUC) required for BECCS and the climate change prevented by BECCS. LUC impacts are determined using global‐equivalent, species–area relationship‐based loss factors. We find that sequestering 0.5–5 Gtonne of CO2 per year with lignocellulosic crop‐based BECCS would require hundreds of Mha of land, and commit tens of terrestrial vertebrate species to extinction. Species loss per unit of negative emissions decreases with: (i) longer lifetimes of BECCS systems, (ii) less overall deployment of crop‐based BECCS and (iii) optimal land allocation, that is prioritizing locations with the lowest species loss per negative emission potential, rather than minimizing overall land use or prioritizing locations with the lowest biodiversity. The consequences of prevented climate change for biodiversity are based on existing climate response relationships. Our tentative comparison shows that for crop‐based BECCS considered over 30 years, LUC impacts on vertebrate species richness may outweigh the positive effects of prevented climate change. Conversely, for BECCS considered over 80 years, the positive effects of climate change mitigation on biodiversity may outweigh the negative effects of LUC. However, both effects and their interaction are highly uncertain and require further understanding, along with the analysis of additional species groups and biodiversity metrics. We conclude that factoring in biodiversity means lignocellulosic crop‐based BECCS should be used early to achieve the required mitigation over longer time periods, on optimal biomass cultivation locations, and most importantly, as little as possible where conversion of natural land is involved, looking instead to sustainably grown or residual biomass‐based feedstocks and alternative strategies for carbon dioxide removal.

Quantifying the global warming potential of carbon dioxide emissions from bioenergy with carbon capture and storage