Carbon Removal as Carbon Revival? Bioenergy, Negative Emissions, and the Politics of Alternative Energy Futures

Abstract

Conscious of the need to limit climate warming to 1.5 degrees, many countries are pinning their hopes upon carbon dioxide (CO2) removal through the industrial-scale combination of bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS). But it is not merely by storing captured CO2 that BECCS enthusiasts hope to harness biomass combustion for climate repair. Increasingly, more productive and ostensibly profitable uses for captured CO2 are also being identified. The concept of BECCS is evolving, in other words, into “BECCUS” —bioenergy with carbon capture, utilisation and storage. Against this backdrop, this Perspective sets out two main arguments. Firstly, regardless of the precise use to which captured CO2 is put, efforts to predicate large-scale negative emissions upon biomass combustion should in our view be understood as attempts to reconfigure the fundamental relationship between climate change and energy use, turning the latter from a historical driver of climate warming into a remedial tool of climate repair. Secondly, the emergence of BECCUS cannot be understood solely as an attempt to make bioenergy-based negative emissions more economically viable. At stake, rather, are conflicting ideas about the role that intensive energy use should play in future global sustainable development pathways. This Perspective therefore calls for governance frameworks for carbon dioxide removal to adjudicate between conflicting approaches to achieving negative emissions not only on the basis of technical efficiency, or even “on-the-ground” social and environmental impacts, but also according to compatibility with socially legitimate visions and understandings of what energy—and more specifically energy use—should ultimately be for in the post-fossil fuel era.

Interactions in co-pyrolysis of Salicornia bigelovii and heavy fuel oil

“…where m o , m, and m N represent the initial, transient and nal mass of sample (mg), respectively. Using the Coats-Redfern integral method, the activation energy was calculated by rearranging and integrating eqn (1), keeping in mind that b ¼ dT dt , the heating rate, is constant during the experiment. [41][42][43] The following is obtained…”

“…This is due to the ability of biomass to reabsorb the emitted CO 2 from the atmosphere as it grows during the photosynthesis process. 1 Biomass usage for energy dates back to when burning wood was used for heating and cooking. 2 Later on, other processes were developed to convert biomass into an energy crop including biochemical and thermochemical techniques.…”

Implications of Preferential Access to Land and Clean Energy for Sustainable Aviation Fuels

“…Relying on these removal strategies is high risk, thermodynamically costly and societally untested (Allen et al, 2022;Rogelj et al, 2021). Bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) does not yet exist at any scale and is a controversial mechanism amongst others because it maintains high-carbon economies (especially when captured carbon is re-used as is the case for SAF, Palmer and Carton, 2021). Clearly, land dedicated to long-lived ecosystem carbon sinks is a superior mitigation strategy compared to its use for bioenergy and should be prioritised where possible (Mackey et al, 2022).…”

The uneven distribution of futurity: Slow emergencies and the event of COVID‐19

“…The ways in which the pandemic disruption has been co-opted in Australia into a rear-guard action by the fossil fuel regime and used to help secure a "carbon revival" (Palmer & Carton, 2021) are evident in the government's framing of its response, which strongly echo the hegemonic discourses about fossil fuels in the country identified by Wright et al (2021). In particular, the fiscal COVID response has been used to support the powerful "fossil fuels are in the national interest" discourse, notably the arguments that fossil fuels underpin "economic prosperity and high living standards" and "jobs and growth" (Wright et al, 2021).…”