Six problems with BECCS

Article available in:

Updated in November 2024

The climate emergency is becoming a climate crisis. Years of inaction have meant that climate scientists and policymakers are no longer just discussing the need to reduce emissions, but how to remove carbon dioxide that is already in the atmosphere. Carbon removals, also referred to as negative emissions, have taken centre stage in the climate conversation. Governments are responding by looking for technological fixes, and are giving particular attention to Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS).

What is BECCS?

In its simplest form, BECCS is the hope that instead of releasing emissions caused by burning biomass, we can store them underground. Proponents say that since trees and agricultural crops naturally remove carbon dioxide from the air, burning them to produce energy, and then capturing and storing the resulting emissions, should deliver negative emissions.

But this belief is based on the faulty assumption that bioenergy is carbon neutral, whereas in fact it removes carbon from forests, not the atmosphere. BECCS also has significant social, environmental, and economic costs and is promoted by fossil fuel interests, distracting from the urgent need to phase out fossil fuels and to protect and restore forests and other ecosystems.

In this briefing, Fern outlines six of BECCS’ main problems and explains why policymakers should exclude it from decarbonisation pathways for 2050 or beyond.

1 - BECCS produces significant emissions

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.

But BECCS projects release considerable indirect and supply chain emissions related to foregone sequestration, biomass production, harvest, transport, refining, capturing and storing.

2 - BECCS has technical barriers and is prohibitively expensive

There is an implicit assumption that BECCS and other carbon capture technologies can be deployed at an extremely rapid pace, but there are significant questions about feasibility, scale and cost.

Costs of BECCS are particularly difficult to estimate as they depend on the price of biomass feedstock, CCS components, infrastructure, operations and electricity.

The technical barriers to carbon capture and sequestration 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.

3 - BECCS would require a huge amount of land and push up the price of food

The amount of land needed for growing dedicated crops for BECCS plants differs depending on the climate scenario, but one example claiming to give us a 50% chance of keeping global warming below 2°C would require the growing of biomass on a land area 1-2 times the size of India.

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.

4 - BECCS would harm biodiversity

Harvesting forests for biomass harms biodiversity, and it is even worse if the forest is converted into a monoculture plantation. A study found that BECCS would almost certainly reduce biodiversity if implemented at scale.

It is estimated that large-scale BECCS would reduce as many terrestrial species as a 2.8°C temperature rise.

5 - BECCS would take a huge amount of water and threaten more planetary boundaries

To produce enough biomass for BECCS to meet the 2°C goal could require over twice the water currently used for global food production, straining our planet’s resources.

6 - BECCS is a barrier to the energy transition

There are many ways we could reduce fossil fuel emissions globally, such as reducing unnecessary use, improving efficiency, and increasing solar and wind. But instead of focusing on solutions to reduce emissions, the fossil fuel industry is promoting BECCS as a ‘fossil fuel-free’ energy source.

BECCS also encourages continued fossil fuel use in several concrete ways, especially when it comes to coal and oil. For example, instead of being decommissioned, many coal power plants are converted to allow the co-firing of biomass and coal, to make BECCS facilities economically and technically more feasible.

Read the briefing