Climate Action Day 65 – Learn About Bioenergy and Carbon Capture and Storage

Nature-Based and Natural Solutions

The Frog will explore The Climate Action Handbook: A Visual Guide to 100 Climate Solutions by Heidi Roop in the first 100 days of 2024

Today is carbon-based acronym day on The Frog Blog! On Day 65 we explored CDR or carbon dioxide removal. CDR is one the strategies in the general approach called CCUS, which stands for Carbon Capture, Utilization, and Storage.

The CC or carbon capture part of CCUS includes DAC – direct air capture of carbon dioxide from the air, and point source capture where CO₂ is removed as it is produced, say at a natural gas power plant. Once you capture it you can utilize it to make other chemicals or you can store it, thus the US in CCUS. Carbon capture, utilization and storage.

But wait, there’s more. Once CCUS process is referred to as BECCS or Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage. It is a complex but important approach with the potential for negative emissions of carbon dioxide. At it’s most hopeful expression, natural materials that are planted and grown to capture CO₂ are burned to generate electricity or heat and the subsequent carbon dioxide is captured and stored in the process.

In short “bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) involves any energy pathway where CO₂is captured from a biogenic source and permanently stored”. Or pull CO₂ out of the air by growing your fuel, burn it for useful energy production, and store the resulting emissions. Seems perfect!

The fuel to be grown is collectively called biomass. This is a renewable resource (because it can be regrown) that includes trees, woody debris, algae, corn, grasses and food waste etc. Biomass can be burned for energy, converted directly fuels like ethanol and other chemical intermediates. If you have a flexible fuel vehicle, and fill up with gasoline blended with ethanol (i.e., E85), you may think you are participating in the BECCS supply chain (assuming that the ethanol is sourced from corn, a likely prospect in the US).

The ethanol-agricultural complex in the US is a controversial as subsidized ethanol production is accompanied by intensive water use, pollution from fertilizers, and significant GHG emissions of fossil fuel based agriculture practices.

Still, the US Department of Energy published a life cycle analysis report on the use of ethanol in transportation fuels which concluded that “displacement of petroleum gasoline by corn ethanol in the transportation fuel market resulted in a total GHG emission reduction benefit of 544 MMT CO2e during the period 2005 to 2019”. This was mainly mainly a result of heavy government subsidies that were translated by the industry into optimized corn yields from improved agricultural practice.

But ethanol production for transportation is not truly a BECCS process because there is no capture of the resulting carbon emission. If the process is designed and implemented with capture and storage, BECCS holds the promise of being carbon negative because some portion of the atmospheric carbon dioxide stored in the plant is not released back to the atmosphere in the production of energy.

Princeton provided a clear overview of the process and prospects of BECCS in climate change mitigation.

The IPCC and IEA are concerned about the potential negative environment impacts and challenges in deploying BECCS processes at a scale to make a difference. The IPCC assumes that the approach will evolve to be a critical process for emissions reductions, but points out potential “adverse side effects” related to land-use, crop diversity, food insecurity, and stresses on ecosystems.

The US Department of Energy is hopeful about and actively promoting the use of biofuels from sources like algae as solutions to hard-to-decarbonize industries like aviation and commercial shipping. Successful implementation will require a sustained and focused research and development effort. The IEA included an analysis of biofuels in their 2021 outlook, which highlighted the challenges.

I do not have a strong individual action to offer here except encouragement in building awareness and understanding of the complexities of the technology solutions being considered for climate change mitigation.

My stance is “hopeful skepticism” at the promotion of a technology to “solve climate change”. This can lead one to understand the potential beneficial role of approaches like BECCS, and even to purposefully supporting their development, “while not becoming overly reliant on hard-to-scale or yet-to-be proven technologies and systems”.

Next Up: Climate Action in 2024 – Day 66: Help Keep Forests Healthy and Intact

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