BECCS at it again
CDR News
A white paper by Heirloom shedding some light on their DAC tech
$1 Billion with a B for a DAC facility in Texas
New paper on temporary nature-based removals
Nerd rating: 3 (1 to 10 scale on the technical density of the post)
History of BECCS
Bioenergy carbon capture and storage (BECCS) is a technology that utilizes the carbon cycle of plants alongside an energy-producing phase and is finished, in some instances, with a capture piece. The history of burning biomass (wood, dung) for cooking and heating goes back to recorded history with early humans using it. This direct burning has adverse health effects due to particulate matter and pollutants. In the modern context, we can think of the bioenergy piece of BECCS as the energy-producing or carrying step by converting biomass into heat, electricity, and liquid or gas fuels. On the liquid fuels piece, during the 1980s and 1990s, the bioenergy revolution (in the US) took off. Ethanol subsidies are given to farmers money to grow corn that would eventually be used in ethanol-based fuels for cars, blended with gasoline. Originally they posited that this would decrease emissions though recent research says it has failed at that task.
For BECSS to fall into the CDR space, we need to focus on the last three letters. Once bioenergy is paired with carbon capture and storage, it becomes a carbon removal technology. For BECSS to claim true CDR status, it must remain carbon negative of the biomass supply chain from production, transport, conversion, and utilization/storage.
As Carbonbrief notes, the first instance of BECCS as a climate mitigation tool came in 2001 with the publishing of Managing Climate Risk in the journal Science, in this paper, the authors state:
“Technologies that can rapidly remove GHGs from the atmosphere will play an important role, particularly if unforeseen catastrophic damages are expected to significantly decrease human welfare and natural capital. Terrestrial sinks are limited by land requirements and saturation, and concerns about permanence limit their attractiveness. However, biomass energy can be used both to produce carbon neutral energy carriers, e.g., electricity and hydrogen, and at the same time offer a permanent CO2 sink by capturing carbon from the biomass at the conversion facility and permanently storing it in geological formations…The cumulative carbon emissions reduction in the 21st century may exceed 500 gigatons of carbon, which represents more than 35% of the total emissions of the reference scenarios, and could lead, in cases of low shares of fossil fuel consumption, to net removal of carbon from the atmosphere (negative emissions) before the end of this century. The long-run potential of such a permanent sink technology is large enough to neutralize historical fossil fuel emissions and satisfy a significant part of global energy and raw material demand.”
Since 2001 the technology has grown in interest and popularity amongst the climate mitigation crowd, with it being included in IPCC models in 2005.
Available Technologies
BECCS encompasses a wide variety of different feedstocks, conversion methods, and use cases. I’ll split them between combustion, biochemical, and thermochemical and offer an example.
Biochemical pathway (fermentation)
The fermentation of biomass (like corn) through bacteria or yeast can create biofuels and a pure carbon dioxide stream that can then be sequestered. This is how ethanol is produced in mass though it can be utilized to produce other liquid fuels.
Thermochemical pathway (pyrolysis, gasification)
In gasification, the biomass is heated to produce syngas and hydrogen. Syngas can be used as a power source. We will cover pyrolysis next week as that is the process that Charm Industrial uses.
Combustion
As it sounds, you can burn the biomass to produce heat or power. The heating is usually found in district heating. Both processes emit carbon which is captured on-site. Regardless of the pathway, captured carbon is either utilized or stored underground. The ADM ethanol facility in Illinois is currently sequestering carbon underground and holds the only two Class VI well (saline aquifer) injection permits ever issued in the United States.
Challenges, current costs, reduction potential
The two fundamental challenges holding back BECCS are the availability of biomass and land associated with that biomass. There are other fundamental questions about the maturity of the capture technology, the tradeoffs associated with growing biomass for eventual capture, decreased albedo, and siting challenges, i.e., do you site next to your fuel, or do you transport the fuel to your facility.
Costs range widely from $15-to $400/ton. This range can be attributed to the type of biomass as a feedstock, the conversion method of that feedstock, the end use of the biomass, the cost of storage and transportation, among other factors.
Estimates for BECCS range from 1.2 – 5.2 GtCO2/yr of carbon dioxide removal to 31 – 77 GtCO2/yr. Again, this variation is driven by all of the above factors.
My thoughts
Whenever I think about BECCS, I think back to this graph from an RMI report.
As you can see, biochar, covered in the last blog, which is also a product of pyrolysis, alongside BECCS, could play a substantial role in removals by 2030. Innovative approaches like Charm’s can provide the sort of scale missing from the pure removal discussion. I’m no BECCSpert and certainly have a lot to learn, but this technology will be pivotal in our near net-zero future.
Next week: BECCS: Company Highlight Charm Industrial
Learn
Fire, Forest, and GHG inventories in California via CarbonPlan
Follow
https://twitter.com/CO2RemovalMemes Great removal memes
https://twitter.com/CharmIndustrial read up on next week’s highlight
https://twitter.com/NoahMcQueen13 Researcher, co-founder of Heirloom, all-around removals hero