Questions about Bioenergy with carbon capture and storage
Short answers, pulled from the story.
What is bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) and how does it work?
BECCS extracts energy from biomass and captures the CO2 produced before it enters the atmosphere, then stores it underground in geological formations. New vegetation growing to replace harvested biomass absorbs CO2 from the air, and intercepting the emissions from combustion creates a net removal of carbon dioxide. Under the right conditions, this makes BECCS one of only two methods capable of producing negative CO2 emissions.
How many BECCS projects are currently operating in the world?
As of 2024, there are three large-scale BECCS projects operating worldwide, all of which are ethanol plants. These include the Illinois Industrial Carbon Capture and Storage project in Decatur, the Arkalon plant in Kansas, and the OCAP project in the Netherlands, along with Husky Energy in Canada.
What is the Illinois Industrial Carbon Capture and Storage (IL-CCS) project?
IL-CCS is the first industrial-scale BECCS project in the world, located in Decatur, Illinois. It captures CO2 from the Archer Daniels Midland ethanol plant and injects it into the Mount Simon Sandstone formation. The pilot phase, which ran from November 2011 to November 2014 at a cost of approximately 84 million dollars, sequestered 1 million tonnes of CO2 with no detected leakage.
How much land would BECCS require to remove significant amounts of CO2?
Removing 10 billion tonnes of CO2 per year would require upwards of 300 million hectares of land, an area larger than India. This demand creates major risks to food production, biodiversity, and water resources, particularly in developing countries.
What are the three carbon capture technologies used in BECCS?
The three main technologies are post-combustion capture, pre-combustion capture, and oxy-fuel combustion. Post-combustion capture has an expected efficiency of 95% and can be retrofitted to existing power plants. Oxy-fuel combustion achieves 87.5% efficiency by burning fuel in pure oxygen to produce a CO2-rich flue gas. Pre-combustion capture gasifies the fuel first, reaching thermal efficiency of roughly 62-100% with biomass.
What is the estimated cost per tonne of CO2 for BECCS?
Cost estimates for BECCS range from 60 to 250 dollars per tonne of CO2. The U.S. Section 45Q tax credit, expanded in 2018, provides up to 50 dollars per tonne for secure geological storage of CO2.