BECCS critical to achieving a net zero Britain

The Committee on Climate Change (CCC) has stated that achieving net zero is not possible without a range of greenhouse gas removal strategies. BECCS, the capture and permanent storage of CO2 released in bioenergy processes, has a central role to play.

BECCS is already a prominent concept in the climate change debate due to its capacity to provide negative emissions, a net removal of CO2 from the atmosphere, compensating for slower emission reductions in hard to decarbonise sectors.

The REA’s paper explores a range of possible policy options that would advance BECCS and its wider co-benefits, including: increasing the UK total carbon price to £50 per t of CO₂ from 2020 to promote rapid emission reductions; supporting BECCS in the Contracts for Difference auctions; and establishing demonstration projects at several scales that use the lowest carbon feedstocks.

This paper follows the publication of the second phase of REA’s Bioenergy Strategy, which identified BECCS as an important strategic opportunity for the UK, delivering equivalent 23 t of CO₂ of carbon savings by 2032 essential to realising the 5^th Carbon Budget and our net zero ambition.

The REA urges the government to establish at least one commercial large-scale BECCS project and several smaller demonstration scale BECCS projects by the late 2020s in order to address residual emissions from hard to decarbonise sectors of the UK economy.

Samuel Stevenson, Policy Analyst at the REA and author of the paper commented that:

“According to the Committee on Climate Change (CCC), the UK will require Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) at scale in order to achieve net zero emissions by 2050.

“BECCS could play an important role in doing this cost-effectively and sustainably, reducing annual CO₂ emissions in the UK by around ~6%, whilst also providing low carbon power, heat and additional co-benefits.

“Negative emissions technologies like BECCS will be needed in order to address the projected 90 - 130 tpy of CO₂ ‘residual’ emissions in 2050 from difficult to decarbonise sectors such as agriculture, aviation and industry. It is estimated that BECCS could contribute between 24 – 51 tpy of CO₂ towards this residual total by 2050.

“However, if the UK wants to deploy BECCS and capitalise on its negative emissions, urgent action is required. Existing policy could be adapted to support BECCS, such as an increased, economy-wide carbon price, a mechanism which properly rewards negative emissions; and enabling BECCS projects to bid for a CfD.”

To read the paper in full, please click here.

Read the article online at: https://www.energyglobal.com/bioenergy/01072019/beccs-critical-to-achieving-a-net-zero-britain/