BECCS fails, creates net positive emissions, harms biodiversity, requires massive amounts of land and water, and precludes the energy transition

*BECCS = Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage, CCS = Carbon Capture and Storage, EOR = Enhanced Oil Recovery

1 - BECCS produces significant emissions BECCS is proposed as a solution based on the assumption that bioenergy would be carbon neutral.2 But this assumption is incorrect, notably because of emissions from land use and forestry: today, 30 percent of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere came from land use change (including deforestation), not fossil fuels (see Figure: Cumulative Global Carbon Dioxide Emissions).3 Even in a best-case scenario where bioenergy was only produced from ‘additional biomass sources’, carbon capture and storage (CCS) only captures emissions released from burning biomass. No mention is made of the indirect and supply chain emissions related to foregone sequestration, biomass production, harvest, transport, refining, capturing and storing. These release considerable emissions. THERE ARE THREE MAIN TYPES OF EMISSIONS TO CONSIDER: • Emissions from logging (which reduce the carbon stock in trees and soil). There is a significant time lag between the moment of harvest or combustion and the assumed regrowth. The general rule is that if you cut a forest down, it takes the same amount of time it took to grow for it to return to its previous level of carbon storage. Even this only works if a significant proportion of wood is left on site to decompose to allow forest regeneration (some carbon from the logged trees is already re-emitted at that point). On average this would be between 50 and 120 years, but there is also the possibility that a forest is never able to host as much carbon as before, especially if the logging method damages soils and depletes it of nutrients. It is also important to remember that due to the unprecedented climate crisis, future growth conditions are unknown. In addition, while a forest left standing continues to remove carbon, the moment it is cut down, sequestration stops. The lost sequestration of a harvested forest is known as foregone sequestration. Without bioenergy demand and the associated production of bioenergy crops, there could be larger climate benefits from letting forests simply get older, storing more carbon rapidly and becoming more resilient to the effects of climate change. Using timber for material uses, and not energy, would also contribute to storing carbon rather than emitting it.4 • Emissions from destructive land use changes. Cultivating dedicated biofuels crops can compete with food production and thereby trigger more deforestation, with forests being converted to agricultural land being one of the largest global drivers of climate change. Growing bioenergy crops could add to this problem and accelerate warming. In addition to direct land-use change, increasing demands for land can drive indirect land-use change (ILUC). For example, if an energy crop such as willow is planted to meet demand for wood chips, and it displaces agricultural land for food production, the food producer needs to find other land, which can drive deforestation. • Emissions from the production of biomass, the supply chain and CCS. The growth of biomass in dedicated crops can lead to a large increase in fertilizer use. Nitrous oxide (N2O), which is released in fertilizer creation, storage and use, is particularly problematic as it has a global warming potential up to 300 times higher than carbon dioxide. Scientists trying to quantify the global warming effect of increased use of N2O have shown that it can be equivalent to between 75 and 310 per cent of the carbon stored in trees. Fertiliser use alone could turn bioenergy into a source of greenhouse gas even before harvesting and combustion take place. Other concerns include that the CCS technology itself requires large amounts of energy to compress the carbon dioxide and inject it deep underground. The additional fuel required when CCS is applied is up to 31 per cent for coal fired installations, meaning any BECCS operation will need to use at least 31 per cent more biomass for the same energy output as a non-BECCS power plant. There is also a risk of carbon dioxide leaks from CCS sites. The weight of biomass means that supply chain emissions can be significant. In the case of dedicated bioenergy crops, emissions from transport, processing and using CCS technology already represents 64 per cent of all carbon stored. For one tonne of carbon dioxide sequestered and stored underground, emissions from the supply chain would amount to 1.11 tonnes of carbon dioxide. 2 - BECCS has technical barriers and is prohibitively expensive Most scenarios for keeping global warming to 1.5 degrees require BECCS to be available and functioning on a gigantic scale from mid-century onwards. There is an implicit assumption that BECCS can be deployed at an extremely rapid pace, but there are significant questions about feasibility, scale and cost. Costs of BECCS are difficult to estimate as they depend on the price of biomass feedstock, CCS components, infrastructure, operations and electricity. A synthesis of different cost estimates gives BECCS a price of €86-172 per tonne of carbon dioxide (tCO2). 5 A recent attempt at costing the BECCS project planned by Drax, in the UK, pointed to the need for a public financial support of more than £30 billion for just this one plant. As the cost of biomass feedstocks rise, so would the cost of BECCS. In comparison, forest protection, restoration and natural management are already in operation. Their costs depend on the price of land and other elements, but estimates range from <8.5- 85 €/tCO2. Technical barriers include the security of carbon dioxide pipelines and storage sites, as leaked highly concentrated carbon dioxide is a lethal risk to the public, ecosystems and the climate, as a recent US accident showed. Injecting compressed carbon dioxide into geological formations can also trigger small earthquakes, themselves possibly causing leakage from the CCS site. As with nuclear waste, storage would need to be permanent, which has significant cost implications. Thus, public concern may form a significant barrier to large scale use of CCS, even more so considering that at least part of the storage costs would be billed to the taxpayer. 3 - BECCS would require a huge amount of land and push up the price of food As the human population increases, more land is needed for food. But agriculture is already pushing humans beyond several ecological planetary boundaries. Where will the additional biomass come from? Studies compiled by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) show that the rising price of bioenergy increases pressure on land and the price of agricultural commodities, including food. Scenarios for staying below 1.5 degrees include options for devoting less than 10 million hectares (Mha) to bioenergy, (the size of South Korea) to more than 1000 Mha (the size of Canada). Growing dedicated crops for BECCS would require 0.1-0.4 hectares of land per hypothetical tonne of carbon removed. The amount of land needed differs depending on the climate scenario, but one example which would give us a 50 per cent chance of keeping global warming below two degrees would require the growing of biomass on a land area 1-2 times the size of India (380– 700million hectares).6 This would correspond to converting 25–46 per cent of global arable land and permanent crops to biomass. The amount of land needed rises dramatically if the aim is to limit warming to 1.5 degrees. There are also huge differences when irrigated bioenergy production is excluded, pointing to the face that there would be a trade-off between water and land requirements if bioenergy is implemented at a large scale.7 Such huge land-use change could also cause serious deterioration of soil, making it harder to grow food, and having dramatic impacts on water and biodiversity. This use of biomass for energy becomes more concerning considering that, in most countries, solar systems can generate more than 100 times the useable energy per hectare than bioenergy is likely to produce in the future, even using optimistic assumptions. 4 - BECCS would harm biodiversity Between 1970 and 2012, vertebrate biodiversity declined by 58 per cent, mainly due to the rising human population and intensification of land use.8 Increasing demand for land for BECCS would therefore be an additional threat to biodiversity. The areas considered to have good potential for dedicated bioenergy crops overlap with protected areas, especially in central Europe, the Mediterranean, the US, Central America, South-East Asia and Central Africa. Biomass that comes from harvesting existing forests harms biodiversity, and this is even worse if the forest is converted to a monoculture plantation. A synthesis study on the impacts of different carbon removal technologies concluded that BECCS would almost certainly reduce biodiversity if implemented at scale. Large scale BECCS would reduce as many terrestrial species as a 2.8 degrees temperature rise. The IPCC’s views on bioenergy are contradictory, as they recognise the environmental impact of scaling-up bioenergy use, yet they include unsustainable levels in their 1.5 degrees scenarios. There is agreement among scientists that bioenergy should be limited to under 100 exajoules (EJ)/year of bioenergy in 2050 and that deployment at this or higher levels would put significant pressure on food prices and the ability to preserve biodiversity.9 Despite this fact, the average amount of bioenergy used in 1.5 degrees scenarios is over 150EJ per year in 2050. 10 This highlights the weaknesses of modelling scenarios that prioritise energy decarbonisation over other environmental impacts. 5 - BECCS would take a huge amount of water and threaten more planetary boundaries When climate modellers talk about ‘additional biomass’ requirements, it is important to consider the large amounts of water it would require. As well as increasing the price of land, biomass demand is expected to increase the price of water by the end of the century, especially in Asia Pacific (by 330 per cent) and Latin America (by 460 per cent). Irrigation is the leading cause to groundwater depletion globally. Already nearly half of the world’s population live in areas with water scarcity and this is expected to increase to five billion people by 2050. It is estimated that to produce enough biomass for BECCS to meet the two degrees aim would require more than doubling the amount of water currently used to irrigate food production. As well as pushing us beyond the limits of our freshwater use, BECCS is likely to push us beyond other planetary boundaries. 11 Researchers have calculated that if regional environmental limits are adopted as precautionary measures the potential for negative emissions from bioenergy plantations is marginal – removing less than 0.1 billion tonnes of carbon per year – a tiny amount of the between 0.6 and 4.1 billion tonnes that is expected to be needed per year by 2050. 6 - BECCS is a barrier to the energy transition There are already many ways we could reduce fossil fuel emissions globally, such as reducing unnecessary use, improving efficiency, and increasing solar and wind. But instead of delivering on those solutions, the fossil fuel industry is keen to tout BECCS as a fossil fuel-free source of energy, while expecting governments to pay (directly or via incentives) for the actual development costs. BECCS also encourages continued fossil fuel use in several concrete ways, particularly when it comes to coal and oil. For example, instead of being decommissioned, many coal power plants are being converted to allow the co-firing of biomass and coal. BECCS power stations that allow for co-firing of biomass with coal would be no different. Co-firing is envisaged as the way to make BECCS facilities economically and technically more feasible. Demonstration projects in the UK and Norway are already testing the CCS of emissions from co-firing biomass with coal. Even more worrying is the prospect of using the carbon dioxide captured from BECCS plants to extract oil from depleted oilfields through a technique known as enhanced oil recovery (EOR). It involves pumping gas at high pressure underground to drive oil to the surface and currently allows a further 5 -15 per cent of oil in some reservoirs to be exploited. Carbon dioxide captured from the current generation of CCS applications (mostly fitted to coal power stations and high emission industrial plants) is already being used on a considerable scale for EOR, partly because CCS is an expensive technology and selling the captured carbon dioxide to oil companies to help them extract more oil is a way of financing the investment. For example, a recently completed largescale retrofit application of CCS to a power plant at Petra Nova in Texas is expected to pay for itself in less than 10 years as a result of carbon dioxide being piped for EOR. Another concern is the possibility of carbon dioxide leakage, which undermines the climate value of sequestering it in the first place. The US oil industry estimates that about 30 per cent of carbon dioxide piped to an EOR site is directly emitted back into the atmosphere. If old oil fields are not capped properly, carbon dioxide held underground may also find a way out.