Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage

Countries and regions making notable progress to advance BECCS include:

• Denmark, where two combined heat and power plants with the capacity to remove more than 0.4 Mt CO₂ per year by 2026 were awarded a contract by the Danish Energy Agency (DEA) in May 2023 as part of the carbon capture, utilisation and storage (CCUS) subsidy scheme, and started construction. In April 2024, the DEA also awarded contracts to three BECCS projects as part of a DKK 2.6 billion (EUR 350 million) subsidy scheme targeted at negative emissions (the Negative Emissions CCS [NECCS] fund).
• In Europe, the European Parliament and the Council of the EU reached a provisional agreement in February 2024 on the Carbon Removals Certification Framework.
• In the United States, where a new capture facility was commissioned at the Blue Flint bioethanol plant in North Dakota, the federal government launched a carbon dioxide removal (CDR) pilot purchasing programme, where the federal government will enter into offtake agreements with CDR providers, including BECCS.
• In the United Kingdom, the government published its response in March 2023 to a public consultation on the development of a BECCS business model in the power sector.
  

BECCS and direct air capture (DAC) with CO₂ storage are technology-based solutions for CDR, required to meet net zero ambitions. BECCS is the only CDR technique that can also provide energy. Biogenic sources used for BECCS can be process emissions resulting from biofuel and biohydrogen production, or combustion emissions from heat and power generation in power plants, waste-to-energy plants and industrial applications fired or co-fired by biomass (cement, pulp and paper) or using biochar as a reducing agent (steel). As an alternative to storage, the captured CO₂ can also be utilised as a feedstock for a range of products. While some carbon capture and utilisation routes can bring important climate benefits, CO₂ removal can only be achieved through permanent storage.

Around 2 Mt CO₂ per year are currently captured from biogenic sources, with less than 1 Mt CO₂ stored in dedicated storage. Around 90% is captured in bioethanol facilities, one of the lowest-cost BECCS applications due to the high concentration of CO₂ in the process gas stream. The largest operating BECCS project to date is the Illinois Industrial CCS Project, which has been capturing CO₂for permanent storage in a deep geological formation since 2018. The Red Trail Energy and Blue Flint bioethanol plants, the second and third in the United States targeting dedicated storage, came online in 2022 and 2023, respectively. Other small-scale bioethanol facilities are capturing CO₂ in Europe and the United States, but these either sell the CO₂ to greenhouses for yield boosting or use it for enhanced oil recovery.

Around 70 additional bioethanol facilities are planned to come online before 2030 (including 57 as part of the Midwest Carbon Express project in the United States), totalling just under 20 Mt of biogenic CO₂ capture capacity.

Project announcements in the past three years suggest that the BECCS project pipeline is diversifying, with proportionally more capture projects being announced in heat and power, hydrogen and cement:

• Around 30 Mt of biogenic CO₂ could be captured from heat and power plants by 2030, with over 80% from dedicated biopower plants, and the remainder from waste-to-energy plants. In Denmark, construction started on two combined heat and power plants after these were awarded a contract by the Danish Energy Agency in 2023 as part of its CCUS subsidy scheme
• In industry, seven cement plants have announced plans to integrate biomass feedstock in the clinker production process and retrofit CCUS. Most cement plants planning to use biomass and carbon capture and storage aim to be at best carbon neutral, rather than carbon negative, due to either partial capture rates or partial biomass substitution for fossil fuels. These include the Brevik Norcem plant in Norway currently under construction, the Go4ECOPlanet project in Poland, the Edmonton cement plant in Canada, the Padeswood cement plant in the United Kingdom, and the GeZero carbon capture project in Germany, all at advanced stages of development.
• Three projects are also targeting CCUS retrofits at pulp and paper mills, including one feasibility announced in 2023 at the Hokuetsu pulp plant, as part of the East Niigata area CCS hub.
• There are plans for five hydrogen facilities to run partly or fully on biomass with CCUS, with two additional facilities announced in 2023 in the United States.
  

While encouraging, plans for BECCS deployment remain insufficient across all sectors to get on track with the NZE Scenario. By 2030, in that scenario around 45 Mt/yr is removed in the power sector, 120 Mt/yr in the fuel transformation sector and around 25 Mt/yr in industry, mainly cement, with nearly 190 Mt captured in total – around three times higher than the ~60 Mt in the project pipeline.

Targeted support will also be required to ensure all projects in planning reach commissioning. Close to 15% of total planned BECCS capacity hinges on the Drax power plant in the UK securing governmental support, after their shortlisted 8 Mt CO₂ per year project was not selected in the government cluster sequencing Track-1 project list. The company nonetheless continues to lead BECCS developments, with two new facilities in the United States with a cumulative capture capacity of 6 Mt CO₂ per year by 2030 announced in May 2023, and more projects under evaluation.

Project experience in bioethanol and biopower plants equipped with CCUS suggests that project lead times on the capture side can range from 1.5 to 6.5 years, averaging 3.5 years. However, lead times depend strongly on the application and destination of the CO₂. The first two plants involving storage that are in operation today – both bioethanol plants in the United States – took around seven years to complete (including the construction of transport and storage infrastructure). In contrast, projects involving the use of captured CO₂ were completed in less than four years.

Bioethanol plants tend to involve shorter lead times than bio-based power applications. Lead times can be as short as one to two years for bioethanol plants, as they only require the installation of CO₂ drying and compression units, which are less capital-intensive than full capture units. Given that current facilities are first- or second-of-a-kind, lead times will most likely shorten as deployment increases. In the United States, the lead time for retrofitting the second bioethanol facility with CCS was one year shorter than for the first, while that for the third was 2.5 years shorter.

As the deployment of CO₂ transport and storage infrastructure is currently an important bottleneck, the deployment of large CCUS hubs can help accelerate lead times for BECCS facilities in the longer term. Given the long lead times involved in the deployment of large CO₂ management infrastructure, investment decisions are needed in the next couple of years to get on track with deployment in 2030 envisaged in the NZE Scenario.

CO₂ capture from first-generation bioethanol production is the most mature BECCS route, with operations dating back to the late 2000s. CO₂ capture at biomass combustion plants has been at the commercial demonstration stage since October 2020 with the commissioning of a capture unit at Mikawa power station in Japan, but large-scale gasification of biomass for synthetic gas applications is still at the large prototype stage.

In industry, biomass co-firing is already commercial in pulp and paper mills, cement plants, and steel blast furnaces. However, CO₂ capture from kilns and blast furnace off-gas is still at the prototype or demonstration stage, though the world’s first commercial CO₂ capture unit on a cement kiln is under construction, for commissioning in 2025.

Chemical absorption is the state-of-the-art capture method, but other capture technologies with a lower energy requirement are at various stages of development. UK power company Drax has been piloting a solid-adsorption capture pilot using metal organic frameworks in its North Yorkshire incubation hub since March 2022. Work to demonstrate large-scale biomass gasification for synthesis gas applications is also under way, seeking to reduce capital costs and increase feedstock flexibility. Projects include one on woody biomass for biomethane production in Sweden, and one on waste in the United Kingdom.

Policy approaches to CDR solutions require a high degree of transparency to demonstrate clear climate benefits and ensure trust from stakeholders. Internationally recognised frameworks are needed to support the integration of CDR, including BECCS, into existing regulations.

In Europe, the the European Parliament and the Council of the EU reached a provisional agreement in February 2024 on the Carbon Removals Certification Framework, an EU-wide voluntary framework for certifying carbon removals. The regulation establishes EU quality criteria and outlines monitoring and reporting processes in order to facilitate investment in carbon removal technologies, including BECCS.

The United States launched a USD 35 million carbon dioxide removal (CDR) purchase pilot prize in September 2023, a public procurement mechanism that will provide cash awards in the form of offtake agreements from the federal government to companies across different removal pathways, including BECCS.

In Denmark, the NECCS Fund provides up to DKK 2.6 billion (EUR 350 million) in subsidies to support negative emissions from CO₂ capture of biogenic sources and subsequent geological storage, with the aim of achieving negative emissions of an additional 0.5 Mt per year from 2025 onwards. The Danish Energy Agency opened a tender for the NECCS Fund in 2023, and awarded three contracts to BECCS projects in April 2024.

In the United Kingdom, the government published its response in March 2023 to a public consultation on the development of a BECCS business model in the power sector. The response confirmed the government’s intention to develop an overarching contractual framework and dual contract for difference payment mechanism for large-scale power BECCS.

Funding is targeting the RD&D of various BECCS applications, as well as specific commercial projects:

• In the European Union, the Horizon Europe funding programme for research and innovation aims to open a tender in September 2024 for BECCS and DAC projects. The deadline to submit proposals is set for January 2025.
• In Denmark, the first tender of the CCUS subsidy scheme released in May 2023 awarded funds to a 0.4 Mt per year BECCS project that is planning to capture CO₂ at two biomass-fired power stations for dedicated storage.
• In the United States, in February 2024 around USD 100 million was announced for CDR pilot projects, including BECCS.
  

Jasmin Kemper, IEA Greenhouse gas R&D programme (IEAGHG), Reviewer