Can BECCS Deliver Sustainable and Resource-efficient Negative Emissions?

By M. Fajardy, Niall Mac Dowell. 2017

333 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Negative emissions technologies (NETs) in general and bioenergy with CO2 capture and storage (BECCS) in particular are commonly regarded as vital yet controversial to meeting our climate goals. In this contribution we present a whole-systems analysis of the BECCS value chain associated with cultivation, harvesting, transport and conversion in dedicated biomass power stations in conjunction with CCS, of a range of biomass resources – both dedicated energy crops (miscanthus, switchgrass, short rotation coppice willow), and agricultural residues (wheat straw). We explicitly consider the implications of sourcing the biomass from different regions, climates and land types. The water, carbon and energy footprints of each value chain were calculated, and their impact on the overall system water, carbon and power efficiencies was evaluated. An extensive literature review was performed and a statistical analysis of the available data is presented. In order to describe the dynamic greenhouse gas balance of such a system, a yearly accounting of the emissions was performed over the lifetime of a BECCS facility, and the carbon “breakeven time” and lifetime net CO2 removal from the atmosphere were determined. The effects of direct and indirect land use change were included, and were found to be a key determinant of the viability of a BECCS project. Overall we conclude that, depending on the conditions of its deployment, BECCS could lead to both carbon positive and negative results. The total quantity of CO2 removed from the atmosphere over the project lifetime and the carbon breakeven time were observed to be highly case specific. This has profound implications for the policy frameworks required to incentivise and regulate the widespread deployment of BECCS technology. The results of a sensitivity analysis on the model combined with the investigation of alternate supply chain scenarios elucidated key levers to improve the sustainability of BECCS: (1) measuring and limiting the impacts of direct and indirect land use change, (2) using carbon neutral power and organic fertilizer, (3) minimising biomass transport, and prioritising sea over road transport, (4) maximising the use of carbon negative fuels, and (5) exploiting alternative biomass processing options, e.g., natural drying or torrefaction. A key conclusion is that, regardless of the biomass and region studied, the sustainability of BECCS relies heavily on intelligent management of the supply chain.

Subfields: Biomedical Engineering, Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Mechanical Engineering

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/9fdeb3e9d79f2a12f4d4b1ae9360b7c9707fcde6

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In Biomedical Engineering

1. R. Pietzcker
2. S. Osorio
3. Renato Rodrigues
4. Sonja Peterson
5. B. Kretschmer

In Electrical and Electronic Engineering

1. S. Osorio
2. Renato Rodrigues
3. R. Pietzcker

In Mechanical Engineering

1. S. Osorio
2. Renato Rodrigues
3. R. Pietzcker
4. Pete Smith

Citations in the corpus

• A Review of Criticisms of Integrated Assessment Models and Proposed Approaches to Address These, through the Lens of BECCS (2019, background): “Others have taken a more robust analytical approach to question the real-world scalability and achievability of net negative emissions from BECCS [86].”
• The economics of bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) deployment in a 1.5 °C or 2 °C world (2021, background): “At a high enough carbon price, the marginal operating cost for BECCS will be lower than both renewables and nuclear, theoretically allowing BECCS plants to operate at a 100% capacity factor (Mac Dowell and Fajardy, 2017).”
• The political economy of negative emissions technologies: consequences for international policy design (2018, unknown): “The cost of CO 2 transport and storage depends on the availability of suitable geological formations on land or under the seabed, but also on the purity of CO 2 , which again depends on the biomass input (Fajardy & Mac Dowell, 2017).”
• The Global Food‐Energy‐Water Nexus (2018, background): “…often touted as the potential advantage of biofuels over conventional fossil fuels, may not be realized for decades after the land conversion when the “carbon debt” from the increased GHG emissions caused by forest clearing has been paid off (Fajardy & Mac Dowell, 2017; Fargione et al., 2008).”
• Tightening EU ETS targets in line with the European Green Deal: Impacts on the decarbonization of the EU power sector (2021, methodology): “13 Although our results show that BECCS availability has limited impact on prices under default assumptions, BECCS deployment would depend on the net negative emissions intensity of these plants (see Appendix C), a very uncertain parameter due to land-use change and processing emissions [46,47] whic”