Overview
- Understanding BECCS Technology
- The BECCS Logistics Chain
- Minimizing Waste with BECCS
- Operating with Existing Infrastructure
- Security Against CO2 Leaks
- Energy Cost
- What BECCS Looks Like in the Future
- Takeaways
The Fundamentals of BECCS
There has been a growing urgency to address climate change. Greenhouse gas emissions need to be drastically reduced, but this alone will not solve the current climate dilemma. In order to reverse climate change, in addition to transitioning away from fossil fuels to renewable energy, carbon removal will also need to be implemented at scale to prevent further warming.
According to the IPCC, carbon removal with BECCS should scale to between 30-780 Billion tonnes within the century to meet the 1.5° climate target.
The latest Synthesis Report released by the IPCC warned that beyond the 1.5° target, the planet will experience an increased intensity of tropical cyclones and an increased frequency of compound heatwaves and droughts. Those most affected will be populations in vulnerable areas around the world as they are 15 times more likely to lose their lives to these natural disasters. If there is any chance of safeguarding communities and ecosystems from catastrophic planetary warming, BECCS will need to play a massive part in the solution.
Understanding BECCS Technology
BECCS technology removes carbon from the atmosphere at scale by utilizing industrial facilities. It can be implemented at a variety of facilities and therefore the process for carbon capture can vary. However, with each pathway, emissions originate from biogenic sources, are captured from industrial processes, and are stored underground through geologic sequestration.
Traditional Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) technologies were first implemented more than fifty years ago and BECCS is a subset of this technology. Instead of capturing fossil emissions from the oil and gas industry, BECCS captures biogenic emissions and is able to contribute to net negative emissions, or in other words carbon removal.
The system overall is net negative, meaning it removes more carbon from the atmosphere than it produces. At optimal performance, traditional Oil & Gas with CCS produces net zero emissions, but is not carbon removal.
The BECCS Logistics Chain Step-by-Step
1. Biomass Sourcing
The carbon dioxide captured by BECCS may come from a variety of organic sources. This includes managed forests, pulp and paper industries, biodegradable waste, or waste residues from forestry and agriculture. Then biomass is brought to bioenergy facilities such as bioethanol plants, municipal solid waste facilities, or combined heat & power plants. At Biorecro, only waste biomass is used in already existing industrial facilities.
2. Carbon Capture
The process for carbon capture with BECCS will vary depending on the facility and biomass will undergo either combustion or conversion.
- With combustion, biomass is burned and BECCS technology captures the carbon dioxide from the flue gas stream. This is the process at facilities that use biomass as an energy source or is included as some part of an industrial process. Combined Heat & Power (CHP) plants combust biomass to generate heat and electricity for municipalities. This same method is also used in various industrial processes such as pulp & paper manufacturing, cement production, and steel & iron production to name a few. After combustion, carbon dioxide is pressurized and converted into a supercritical fluid. As a supercritical fluid, carbon dioxide takes up less space, allowing for easier transportation and a greater volume to be sequestered underground.
- With conversion, biomass goes through fermentation. This is done to generate liquid fuels like bioethanol. As part of the production process for creating these biofuels, a nearly pure CO2 stream is created as a waste byproduct that can be then compressed and stored. This waste CO2 would then be used within the BECCS logistics chain to remove carbon from the atmosphere. Biofuels are primarily used as an alternative to power vehicles, but they can also produce energy for heating and electricity generation.
3. Transportation & Intermediate Storage
After separation, carbon dioxide is brought from the facility to the sequestration site. This may be done through a combination of pipelines, ships, trucks, or trains to a secure geologic storage site. In most cases, there is some form of intermediate storage that is used prior to loading the CO2 onto different transportation modes. This occurs on-site and can be thought of as a “waiting room” for CO2 prior to it being transported for geologic storage.
4. Long-Term Carbon Removal
The carbon dioxide is injected thousands of meters deep underground into a geologic reservoir. Reservoirs are typically saline formations, unmineable coal seams, oil and natural gas reservoirs, shale rocks, or basalt formations.
The porosity and permeability of the reservoirs allow carbon dioxide to integrate without issue. Additionally, there is a cap rock that resides above the reservoir that acts as a sealant so the carbon dioxide will remain securely in place permanently. Once sequestered underground, carbon dioxide will begin to mineralize. Studies have shown that the mineralization process can take as little as two years.
Minimizing Waste with BECCS
The best unit economics is dependent on minimal inputs and removing carbon dioxide on a large scale while also prioritizing low cost and low energy use. This is why Biorecro approaches BECCS with existing infrastructure and waste-CO2.
BECCS technology can capture carbon emissions sourced from any organic matter. However, at Biorecro the integration of BECCS uses biomass feedstocks that consist of existing waste, meaning that the process does not involve any virgin biomass.
Electing to operate at already existing facilities that only process CO2 waste streams avoids using biomass that would otherwise be untouched. It also avoids occupying space in already constrained locations such as land or oceans. These facilities don’t grow new crops for management, therefore no land is acquired from communities or existing agriculture. This preserves ecosystem integrity in varying environments and limits the disruption of sourcing biomass.
BECCS vs Other CDR Methods
An important aspect of BECCS in relation to other carbon removal technologies is its ability to use very few resources when piggybacking off existing biomass industries. Biochar, bio-oil injection, and Direct Air Capture (DAC) are other CDR methods with limited scale and cost-effectiveness than BECCS.
Biochar and bio-oil are both substances made from organic matter during pyrolysis, a thermochemical conversion process. They typically require dedicated biomass resources and have less scale than BECCS. Biochar in particular removes carbon with less permanence in comparison to BECCS.
The pyrolysis production process also has considerable energy and cost requirements. BECCS on the other hand is significantly more efficient when factoring in energy and cost. There are also no co-benefits of energy production with biochar or bio-oil.
Direct Air Capture (DAC) and BECCS both achieve permanent storage on geologic time scales. In DAC technology carbon is captured directly from the atmosphere at a concentration of just 0.041% CO2 (i.e. 417 ppm). In contrast, BECCS technology utilizes sources at much higher concentrations of CO2.
This higher concentration of CO2 makes the BECCS process significantly more efficient, requiring less operational cost and energy demand overall when compared to DAC.
Scalability between DAC and BECCS is also noticeably distinct with DAC removing carbon in tens of thousands of tonnes/year. In contrast, BECCS can remove carbon in the order of hundreds of thousands.
Operating with Existing Infrastructure
By leveraging waste-CO2 and existing infrastructure, the scale of carbon removed from the atmosphere is larger in tonnes and requires less energy compared to other removal methods. Minimizing resource input with energy, biomass, and acreage helps reduce the environmental footprint overall.
For example, the CHP plants produce energy from waste biomass to power their municipalities. By installing BECCS technology to capture carbon emissions, this already existing energy production can undergo a sustainable upgrade and bring in additional revenue to the facility. In this system, cities receive power and heat while carbon is removed from the atmosphere.
One BECCS facility has the capacity to remove carbon emissions in the hundreds of thousands of tonnes per year.
In comparison, DAC removes tens of thousands of tonnes/year, and biochar and bio-oil injection only remove thousands of tonnes/year. These critical aspects of BECCS save money which lowers the threshold for diffusion and rate of adoption. It also saves precious material and energy resources.
BECCS offers the leanest solution for permanent negative emissions from a resource, energy, and materials perspective (i.e., excluding sourcing from dedicated biomass sinks such as forestry and soil systems). This is especially true as the herein proposed systems only depend on existing biomass uses and existing waste streams. At this scale, BECCS saves money, material, and energy resources.
Image: Biogas plant
How Secure is BECCS Against Leaks?
Because CCS technology uses geologic formations to sequester CO2, the longevity of carbon storage is permanent. An IPCC special report on CCS explains that gases and fluids like CO2 will remain underground for millions of years as shown by the evidence from oil and gas fields. Furthermore, the characteristics of carbon dioxide allow it to belowground. Geologic storage security for BECCS is reliable and the possibility of leaks once sequestered is unlikely.
Costs and Energy Requirements of BECCS
The energy input of BECCS is less than other CDR technologies like DAC. As previously mentioned, BECCS can capture a higher concentration of CO2, thus requiring less energy. As a result, the cost of DAC is also great due to its energy requirements. As compared to other energy-intensive CDR methods, BECCS can be established at energy-producing facilities. The biogenic sources of CO2 for BECCS can be used to produce heat and power. This makes BECCS the sole CDR technology that can also contribute to energy production. This is the case when BECCS operations are implemented at combined heat and power plants.
Biorecro partnered with Swedish district heating and electricity producer, Söderenergi, for the installation of BECCS at the Igelsta CHP plant. The plant uses recycled and renewable fuels and waste to produce district heating, providing for 300,000 residents and industries in the southern Stockholm region. The installation of BECCS technology at Söderenergi would create a sustainable operation that captures 80-95% of flue gas emissions from an already existing waste high-concentration CO2 stream.
What BECCS Looks Like in the Future
Interest in BECCS Technology continues to grow as attention turns to infrastructure and clean energy investments. In the United States, the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) went into effect in August 2022 and became a significant upgrade to the already existing 45Q tax credit for CCS (which includes BECCS). Prior to the IRA, a BECCS facility could receive $50/tonne for each tonne of carbon sequestered. Today that tax credit is up to $85/tonne. It is expected that both on the regulatory and voluntary markets in the US, support for BECCS will continue to increase in the coming years.
Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images
Similar support for BECCS can also be seen in the Nordics. In November 2022, the Swedish government announced an investment of $3.3B (SEK 36B). The country has a national goal of zero net greenhouse gas emissions by 2045 and recognizes that the scalability of BECCS can assist in reaching this target. This is among a backdrop of further increased support for CCS development in both Denmark and Norway and a push by the European Commission with the Net-Zero Industry Act, which aims to establish an annual 50Mt injection capacity in CO2 storage sites in the EU by 2030.
Conclusion
Addressing climate change must be a collective and global effort. Collaboration will take place at every level and quantifiable actions are essential for seeing significant change. Because BECCS technology can produce scalable carbon removal with minimal inputs, it will play a pivotal role in restoring Earth’s atmosphere to pre-industrial concentrations of CO2.
