You’ve probably seen catchy graphs claiming that carbon dioxide levels will drop by the end of the century. The idea is simple: harvest plants, burn them for energy, and capture the CO2. Easy, right?
This approach is called bioenergy with carbon capture and storage, or BECCS. Unfortunately, it’s proving to be more of a disaster than a solution. It’s not being deployed at the scale needed, mainly because it’s very expensive and harmful to biodiversity. Plus, it often leads to higher CO2 emissions, rather than reducing them.
BECCS was first suggested back in 2001 by researchers in Sweden looking for ways to let paper mills earn carbon credits. By 2014, it became part of mainstream climate models, but it’s a theory that has yet to materialize into a practical solution.
One of the most talked-about projects was the Drax plant in the UK. It planned to turn a major coal power station into one that uses wood pellets while capturing CO2. Fast forward to today, and Drax is burning wood but not capturing any carbon at all. Recently, the company even put its carbon capture plans on ice. They still see potential in BECCS but acknowledge that it’s a long way off.
Other smaller BECCS projects are popping up globally, but governments are hesitant to invest. As Tim Searchinger from Princeton University points out, it’s “phenomenally expensive.” Ironically, not rolling out this technology might actually be for the best—given its inefficiency.
Searchinger’s research indicates that it could take as long as 150 years for BECCS to make a real difference in CO2 levels. In the initial decades, it might even worsen the situation compared to just burning natural gas.
Here’s why: BECCS aims to turn carbon already found in forests into stored CO2 elsewhere, but a significant amount gets lost during the process. For example, not all carbon from the forest makes it to power plants. Some gets discarded when trees are harvested or left to rot. When you burn wood, it produces double the carbon compared to burning gas, and capturing that carbon takes a lot of energy, requiring even more wood to fuel the process.
There’s also a more nuanced issue. Some believe that as long as we don’t harvest trees faster than they grow back, it’s sustainable. However, many climate models assume forests will continue to absorb more carbon, thanks to the rising CO2 levels itself acting as a fertilizer. Over-exploitation could undermine this essential carbon sink.
While some of these plans focus on fast-growing crops, the reality is that we continue to destroy rainforests for farmland. Expanding agriculture in this way would worsen biodiversity loss.
So, without BECCS, finding solutions to bring CO2 levels down can seem bleak. But perhaps the better path is to accelerate our efforts towards renewable energy like wind and solar. As Searchinger puts it, our focus should be on preventing CO2 levels from rising further.
For deeper insights on this topic, you can check the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports that discuss carbon management strategies and their impacts.
It’s a crucial conversation as we navigate the challenges of climate change.
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