![]() That is hardly a climate-friendly solution.Īlready, some proposed BECCS projects have foundered on these obstacles. In other words, a technology advertised as carbon-negative would result in the production of a billion new barrels of carbon-producing fossil fuels-oil that would not otherwise be produced. Studies have estimated that about a billion barrels of residual oil could be recovered in the Illinois basin using carbon dioxide for enhanced oil recovery. Once it’s complete, the captured carbon will not be stored underground but used for enhanced oil recovery in nearby wells. And it still awaits final approval from the U.S. “Permitting has been a long and complex process,” says Scott McDonald, the project manager. The project has been years in development. The most prominent BECCS project currently underway is Archer Daniels Midland’s project at Decatur, Illinois. That is nominally true, but it doesn’t account for the energy required for growing, harvesting, processing, and transporting the biomass, and it diverts land from other purposes, including food crops, that will become more urgent as the human population surges toward nine billion. Advocates assert that because plants capture carbon from the atmosphere, burning the plants and releasing the carbon back into the atmosphere does not result in a net gain. The first is that sufficient amounts of biomass could be produced to displace a significant percentage of fossil-fuel produced electricity, and that producing those amounts would be carbon-neutral. ![]() Finally, the carbon dioxide would be stored in deep-underground aquifers, presumably permanently. The resulting emissions would be separated using carbon-capture technologies that have been proven at small scale but have never been applied economically at anything like commercial scale. The biomass would then be turned into pellets for burning in power plants-either on their own or as additives. Large amounts of biomass would be produced from fast-growing trees, switchgrass, agriculture waste, or other sources. But there is no guarantee that it will ever work. ![]() Known as “bioenergy plus carbon capture and storage,” or BECCS, this cumbersome process is receiving renewed attention in the wake of Paris. The other is to rely on plants to capture the carbon dioxide, then burn the plants to generate power (or refine them into liquid fuels such as ethanol), and capture the resulting carbon emissions. Technologies to do so are still in their infancy and, even if they do prove practical, are likely decades away from deployment-far too late to achieve the goals of the Paris agreement (see “Materials Could Capture CO2 and Make It Useful”). There are basically two ways to eliminate carbon from the atmosphere. Of the 116 scenarios reviewed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to achieve stabilization of carbon in the atmosphere at between 430 and 480 parts per million (the level considered necessary for a maximum 2 ☌ rise in temperature), 101 involve some form of negative emissions. Such technologies are theoretical at best, but they are considered critical for achieving the Paris goals. We also must remove from the atmosphere huge amounts of carbon dioxide that have already been emitted (see “Paris Climate Agreement Rests on Shaky Technological Foundations”).ĭoing so will involve “negative emissions technologies”-systems that capture carbon dioxide and store it, usually deep underground. While many scientists and climate change activists hailed December’s Paris agreement as a historic step forward for international efforts to limit global warming, the landmark accord rests on a highly dubious assumption: to achieve the goal of limiting the rise in global average temperature to less than 2 ☌ (much less the more ambitious goal of 1.5 ☌), we don’t just need to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide to essentially zero by the end of this century.
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