Bioenergy with carbon capture and storage

Bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) is the process of extracting bioenergy from biomass and capturing and storing the carbon, thereby removing it from the atmosphere.[1] The carbon in the biomass comes from the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide (CO2) which is extracted from the atmosphere by the biomass when it grows. Energy is extracted in useful forms (electricity, heat, biofuels, etc.) as the biomass is utilized through combustion, fermentation, pyrolysis or other conversion methods. Some of the carbon in the biomass is converted to CO2 or biochar which can then be stored by geologic sequestration or land application, respectively, enabling carbon dioxide removal and making BECCS a negative emissions technology.[2]

The IPCC Fifth Assessment Report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), suggests a potential range of negative emissions from BECCS of 0 to 22 gigatonnes per year.[3] As of 2019[update], five facilities around the world were actively using BECCS technologies and were capturing approximately 1.5 million tonnes per year of CO2.[4] Wide deployment of BECCS is constrained by cost and availability of biomass.[5][6]

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