scholarly journals Challenges to the use of BECCS as a keystone technology in pursuit of 1.5⁰C

2018 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
Author(s):  
Clair Gough ◽  
Samira Garcia-Freites ◽  
Christopher Jones ◽  
Sarah Mander ◽  
Brendan Moore ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Integrated Assessment ◽  
Carbon Capture ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Carbon Capture And Storage ◽  
Global Scale ◽  
Paris Agreement ◽  
Biomass Energy ◽  
Research Needs ◽  
Negative Emissions ◽  
And Storage

Non-technical summaryBiomass energy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) is represented in many integrated assessment models as a keystone technology in delivering the Paris Agreement on climate change. This paper explores six key challenges in relation to large scale BECCS deployment and considers ways to address these challenges. Research needs to consider how BECCS fits in the context of other mitigation approaches, how it can be accommodated within existing policy drivers and goals, identify where it fits within the wider socioeconomic landscape, and ensure that genuine net negative emissions can be delivered on a global scale.

The 1.5°C Target, Political Implications, and the Role of BECCS

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sabine Fuss
Keyword(s):  
Carbon Capture ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Carbon Budget ◽  
Agricultural Sector ◽  
Carbon Capture And Storage ◽  
Direct Air Capture ◽  
Prime Concern ◽  
Negative Emissions ◽  
Air Capture ◽  
And Storage

The 2°C target for global warming had been under severe scrutiny in the run-up to the climate negotiations in Paris in 2015 (COP21). Clearly, with a remaining carbon budget of 470–1,020 GtCO2eq from 2015 onwards for a 66% probability of stabilizing at concentration levels consistent with remaining below 2°C warming at the end of the 21st century and yearly emissions of about 40 GtCO2 per year, not much room is left for further postponing action. Many of the low stabilization pathways actually resort to the extraction of CO2 from the atmosphere (known as negative emissions or Carbon Dioxide Removal [CDR]), mostly by means of Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS): if the biomass feedstock is produced sustainably, the emissions would be low or even carbon-neutral, as the additional planting of biomass would sequester about as much CO2 as is generated during energy generation. If additionally carbon capture and storage is applied, then the emissions balance would be negative. Large BECCS deployment thus facilitates reaching the 2°C target, also allowing for some flexibility in other sectors that are difficult to decarbonize rapidly, such as the agricultural sector. However, the large reliance on BECCS has raised uneasiness among policymakers, the public, and even scientists, with risks to sustainability being voiced as the prime concern. For example, the large-scale deployment of BECCS would require vast areas of land to be set aside for the cultivation of biomass, which is feared to conflict with conservation of ecosystem services and with ensuring food security in the face of a still growing population.While the progress that has been made in Paris leading to an agreement on stabilizing “well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels” and “pursuing efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C” was mainly motivated by the extent of the impacts, which are perceived to be unacceptably high for some regions already at lower temperature increases, it has to be taken with a grain of salt: moving to 1.5°C will further shrink the time frame to act and BECCS will play an even bigger role. In fact, aiming at 1.5°C will substantially reduce the remaining carbon budget previously indicated for reaching 2°C. Recent research on the biophysical limits to BECCS and also other negative emissions options such as Direct Air Capture indicates that they all run into their respective bottlenecks—BECCS with respect to land requirements, but on the upside producing bioenergy as a side product, while Direct Air Capture does not need much land, but is more energy-intensive. In order to provide for the negative emissions needed for achieving the 1.5°C target in a sustainable way, a portfolio of negative emissions options needs to minimize unwanted effects on non–climate policy goals.

scholarly journals Negative emissions technologies and carbon capture and storage to achieve the Paris Agreement commitments

2018 ◽  
Vol 376 (2119) ◽  
pp. 20160447 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. Stuart Haszeldine ◽  
Stephanie Flude ◽  
Gareth Johnson ◽  
Vivian Scott
Keyword(s):  
Carbon Capture ◽  
Low Cost ◽  
Carbon Capture And Storage ◽  
Paris Agreement ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Climate Mitigation ◽  
Emission Rates ◽  
Negative Emissions ◽  
Warming World ◽  
And Storage

How will the global atmosphere and climate be protected? Achieving net-zero CO 2 emissions will require carbon capture and storage (CCS) to reduce current GHG emission rates, and negative emissions technology (NET) to recapture previously emitted greenhouse gases. Delivering NET requires radical cost and regulatory innovation to impact on climate mitigation. Present NET exemplars are few, are at small-scale and not deployable within a decade, with the exception of rock weathering, or direct injection of CO 2 into selected ocean water masses. To keep warming less than 2°C, bioenergy with CCS (BECCS) has been modelled but does not yet exist at industrial scale. CCS already exists in many forms and at low cost. However, CCS has no political drivers to enforce its deployment. We make a new analysis of all global CCS projects and model the build rate out to 2050, deducing this is 100 times too slow. Our projection to 2050 captures just 700 Mt CO 2  yr −1 , not the minimum 6000 Mt CO 2  yr −1 required to meet the 2°C target. Hence new policies are needed to incentivize commercial CCS. A first urgent action for all countries is to commercially assess their CO 2 storage. A second simple action is to assign a Certificate of CO 2 Storage onto producers of fossil carbon, mandating a progressively increasing proportion of CO 2 to be stored. No CCS means no 2°C. This article is part of the theme issue ‘The Paris Agreement: understanding the physical and social challenges for a warming world of 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels'.

scholarly journals Preconditions for bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) in sub-Saharan Africa: the case of Tanzania

2019 ◽  
Vol 22 (7) ◽  
pp. 6851-6875 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anders Hansson ◽  
Mathias Fridahl ◽  
Simon Haikola ◽  
Pius Yanda ◽  
Noah Pauline ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Carbon Capture ◽  
Carbon Capture And Storage ◽  
Developed Countries ◽  
Point Sources ◽  
Biomass Energy ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Climate Mitigation ◽  
Mitigation Scenarios ◽  
Negative Emissions ◽  
And Storage

AbstractMost 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.

scholarly journals Carbon Removal as Carbon Revival? Bioenergy, Negative Emissions, and the Politics of Alternative Energy Futures

2021 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Palmer ◽  
Wim Carton
Keyword(s):  
Carbon Dioxide ◽  
Climate Warming ◽  
Carbon Capture ◽  
Alternative Energy ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Energy Use ◽  
Carbon Capture And Storage ◽  
Biomass Combustion ◽  
Negative Emissions ◽  
And Storage

Conscious of the need to limit climate warming to 1.5 degrees, many countries are pinning their hopes upon carbon dioxide (CO2) removal through the industrial-scale combination of bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS). But it is not merely by storing captured CO2 that BECCS enthusiasts hope to harness biomass combustion for climate repair. Increasingly, more productive and ostensibly profitable uses for captured CO2 are also being identified. The concept of BECCS is evolving, in other words, into “BECCUS” —bioenergy with carbon capture, utilisation and storage. Against this backdrop, this Perspective sets out two main arguments. Firstly, regardless of the precise use to which captured CO2 is put, efforts to predicate large-scale negative emissions upon biomass combustion should in our view be understood as attempts to reconfigure the fundamental relationship between climate change and energy use, turning the latter from a historical driver of climate warming into a remedial tool of climate repair. Secondly, the emergence of BECCUS cannot be understood solely as an attempt to make bioenergy-based negative emissions more economically viable. At stake, rather, are conflicting ideas about the role that intensive energy use should play in future global sustainable development pathways. This Perspective therefore calls for governance frameworks for carbon dioxide removal to adjudicate between conflicting approaches to achieving negative emissions not only on the basis of technical efficiency, or even “on-the-ground” social and environmental impacts, but also according to compatibility with socially legitimate visions and understandings of what energy—and more specifically energy use—should ultimately be for in the post-fossil fuel era.

scholarly journals Carbon capture and storage (CCS): the way forward

2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (5) ◽  
pp. 1062-1176 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mai Bui ◽  
Claire S. Adjiman ◽  
André Bardow ◽  
Edward J. Anthony ◽  
Andy Boston ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Carbon Capture ◽  
Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide ◽  
Climate Change Mitigation ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
State Of The Art ◽  
Carbon Capture And Storage ◽  
Negative Emissions ◽  
And Storage ◽  
Change Mitigation ◽  
The Way

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is vital to climate change mitigation, and has application across the economy, in addition to facilitating atmospheric carbon dioxide removal resulting in emissions offsets and net negative emissions. This contribution reviews the state-of-the-art and identifies key challenges which must be overcome in order to pave the way for its large-scale deployment.

Sustainable Energy through Carbon Capture and Storage: Role of Geo-Modeling Studies

2012 ◽  
Vol 23 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 299-317 ◽  
Author(s):  
Malti Goel
Keyword(s):  
Carbon Capture ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Sustainable Energy ◽  
Carbon Capture And Storage ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Research Needs ◽  
Modeling Studies ◽  
Recent Developments ◽  
And Storage

The technology for CO2 sequestration is developing fast and a lot of activity to launch pilot and demonstration projects in Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) is taking place internationally. The technologies are large-scale and their sustainability is dependent on cost, reliability and acceptability. Geo-modeling has an important role to play in assessing the potential and feasibility. This paper describes recent developments in CCS technology, examines the various options for CO2 fixation and the possible role of geo-modeling studies. We present issues and challenges in modeling and monitoring studies in CO2 fixation and provide glimpses of current research in India. Future research needs are discussed.

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