Authors
David Sandalow
Center on Global Energy Policy,
Columbia University
Chair, ICEF Innovation Roadmap Project
Roger Aines
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Julio Friedmann
Center on Global Energy Policy,
Columbia University
Colin McCormick
Walsh School of Foreign Service,
Georgetown University
Daniel L. Sanchez
Department of Environmental Science,
Policy, and Management
University of California-Berkeley
Roger Aines contributed to thetechnical evaluations but not thepolicy recommendations in thisdocument.

This roadmap was prepared to facilitate dialogue at the Seventh Innovation
for Cool Earth Forum (October 2020), for final release in January 2021.
We are deeply grateful to the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) and
New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO), Japanfor launching and supporting the ICEF Innovation Roadmap Project of which this is a part.

LLNL-TR-815200

Contents
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

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1

CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION

6CHAPTER 2 BACKGROUND

11

CHAPTER 3 BiCRS – RATIONALE AND RISKS

14

CHAPTER 4 BIOMASS FEEDSTOCKS21

CHAPTER 5 TRANSPORT

27

CHAPTER 6 CONVERSION PROCESSES30

CHAPTER 7 CARBON SEPARATION AND STORAGE

37

CHAPTER 8 RESEARCH AGENDA

45

CHAPTER 9 POLICY51

CHAPTER 10 FINDINGS AND RECOMMENDATIONS
iii

PREFACE
This eighth ICEF roadmap tackles a challenging topic: the use of plants or algae to remove carbon dioxide (CO2) fromthe atmosphere and store that CO2 underground or in long-lived products.
Climate change experts have explored aspects of this topic for several decades. “Bioenergy with carbon capture andstorage,” or BECCS, has been an important part of several influential models projecting pathways to achieving thegoals set forth in the Paris Agreement. Yet very few BECCS facilities exist today, and expansion plans are modest. The
topic has stirred controversy due to concerns that using biomass for CO2 removal and storage could have adverse
impacts on food security, rural livelihoods, biodiversity conservation and other values.
In considering this topic, we found the existing nomenclature to be inadequate, so introduce the new term “biomass
carbon removal and storage,” or BiCRS. We conclude that BiCRS processes have the potential to contribute to climatechange mitigation, although not at the scale assumed in some models. We believe that concerns with respect topotential adverse impacts of using biomass for CO2 removal and storage are vitally important and must shape any
vision for how BiCRS processes scale.
This roadmap builds on the body of literature produced annually in connection with the ICEF conference. Previous
roadmaps have addressed:■ Industrial Heat Decarbonization (2019)■ Direct Air Capture (2018)■ Carbon Dioxide Utilization (2017 and 2016)■ Energy Storage (2017)■ Zero Energy Buildings (2016)■ Solar and Storage (2015)

As with previous roadmaps, this roadmap was released in draft form at the annual ICEF conference in early October(held virtually in 2020). Comments were received at the conference and by email in the weeks that followed.
This roadmap is a team effort. We are deeply grateful for the support provided by the ICEF Secretariat, ICEF Steering
Committee (including in particular its chair, Nobuo Tanaka), the New Energy and Industrial Technology Development
Organization (NEDO), experts at the Institute of Energy Economics-Japan, and our design and copy edit team(including in particular Ms. Jeannette Yusko and Dr. Kathryn Lindl).
The COVID-19 pandemic, which has shaped all our lives in the past year, underscores humanity’s vulnerability to
global threats. The steady accumulation of heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere is such a threat, creating risks of
disruptions even greater than the terrible tragedies experienced as a result of COVID-19. However, solutions areavailable. The dramatic cost declines in solar and wind power in recent years offer just one example, which must be
replicated across a wide range of other areas.
The ICEF Innovation Roadmap Project aims to contribute to the global dialogue about solutions to the challenge ofclimate change. We welcome your thoughts, reactions and suggestions.
David Sandalow
Chair, ICEF Innovation Roadmap Project
Inaugural Fellow, Center on Global Energy Policy,
Columbia University

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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION
This roadmap introduces a new term: biomass carbon removal and storage (BiCRS). The term
describes a range of processes that use plants and algae to remove carbon dioxide (CO2) from theatmosphere and store that CO2 underground or in long-lived products.
We started out to write a roadmap on bioenergy carbon capture and storage (BECCS). However, after
analysis, we believe the term “BECCS” is too limited and has the wrong emphasis. BECCS starts withthe word “bioenergy,” but some processes that use biomass to remove CO2 from the atmosphere do
not involve bioenergy. Furthermore, when bioenergy is combined with carbon capture and storage(CCS), the removal of carbon from the atmosphere—not the production of energy—will often be themost valuable part of the process. (Most biomass has high carbon value but poor energy value.)
Accordingly, we introduce the new term BiCRS, which we define as a process that(a) uses biomass to remove CO2 from the atmosphere,(b) stores that CO2 underground or in long-lived products, and(c) does no damage to—and ideally promotes—food security, rural livelihoods, biodiversity
conservation and other important values.
The use of biomass for climate mitigation has generated controversy for many years. Advocates haveargued that strategies such as avoided deforestation, afforestation and BECCS could provide multiple
benefits, including cheap emissions reductions, low-cost removal of CO2 from the atmosphere,
biodiversity conservation and sustainable livelihoods. Critics have highlighted risks, including
competition with food resources, adverse impacts on rural communities, slowing the steps needed
to transition from fossil fuels, and indirect land-use change reducing or eliminating claimed climate
benefits.
Three principles have guided our approach to BiCRS:■ First, do no harm.
■ Second, social acceptability is key to BiCRS’ success.
■ Third, technology development should reflect social priorities.

CHAPTER 2: BACKGROUND
The idea of combining bioenergy with CCS was first proposed roughly 20 years ago. BECCS wasfeatured prominently in several integrated assessment models in advance of the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fifth Assessment Report (2014) and IPCC 1.5 °C Report (2018).
Unfortunately several models allocated very large and unrealistic amounts of carbon removal to
BECCS.
Relatively few commercial-scale facilities that use biomass to sequester carbon underground or inlong-lived products are in operation today. We estimate ~2.5 Mt/y of CO2 is currently sequesteredby such facilities, with as much as 25 MtCO2/y in planning or development. This is 1000-2000 times
smaller than BiCRS’ 2.5-5.0 GtCO2/y potential.
While these facilities sequester carbon, they may or may not meet the standards for a BiCRS
facility: doing no damage to—and ideally promoting—food security, rural livelihoods, biodiversity
conservation and other important values.

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Under reasonable assumptions, the value of using biomass for removing carbon from theatmosphere may exceed the value of using biomass for energy. (The authors have labeled this the“Aines Principle,” after our co-author Roger Aines who first proposed it.) This observation suggests
the need for a paradigm shift in thinking about the optimal uses of biomass resources.

CHAPTER 3: BiCRS – RATIONALE AND RISKS
Removing CO2 from the air and oceans is necessary to meet global climate goals. The scale of theendeavor—more than 10 billion tCO2/y by mid-century—is daunting.
Three major approaches have been proposed for removing CO2 from the atmosphere: (1) natural
solutions (forests, soils and wetlands), (2) engineered methods to directly remove CO2 from theair (such as direct air capture), and (3) hybrid approaches (such as BiCRS). We believe all three
approaches will be needed in the decades ahead. If properly developed, regulated and monitored,
BiRCS could contribute many gigatons of carbon removal while promoting economic development
around the world.
However some types of biomass production—including some dedicated energy crops—can damage
ecosystems, hurt local farmers and increase global carbon emissions. To be successful, biomass
conversion for carbon removal must prevent harm to ecosystems, generate economic returns, andensure removal of carbon from the atmosphere taking account of indirect land-use effects.

CHAPTER 4: BIOMASS FEEDSTOCKS
Potential sources of biomass for BiCRS include the following:■ Waste biomass including agricultural wastes, forestry wastes, black liquor from paper production

and municipal solid wastes. Waste biomass is the most desirable type of feedstock for BiCRS due
to it low cost, low environmental impact and low impact on food and fiber production.
■ Dedicated energy crops including sugar cane, corn, rapeseed, palm oil and soya, as well as woody
biomass such as willow, eucalyptus, poplar and pine.
■ Microalgae, typically cultivated on land, in ponds or in reactors.
■ Macroalgae (seaweed) grown in oceans or lakes.
Previous work has analyzed annual global biomass availability for biofuel production. Based on
this work and our own analysis, we find roughly 2.5 to 5.0 GtCO2/y could be removed from theatmosphere and stored by 2050 using biomass produced with minimal environmental impact.

CHAPTER 5: TRANSPORT
Biomass can be transported by truck, rail or ship. The products of biomass conversion (such as
ethanol, hydrogen or captured CO2) can also be transported by truck, rail or ship and, in somecases, by pipeline. The current structure of global trade in bioenergy is based on moving processedbiomass (mainly wood pellets and bioethanol) to a final conversion facility near the location whereenergy services will be consumed.
BiCRS could operate differently: conversion facilities could be located near the source of biomass
feedstock, with little biomass traded globally. The CO2 captured during conversion could be stored
underground near the conversion facility, with the carbon removal benefits sold to global buyers
based on widely agreed upon accounting and sustainability standards. The energy services or
products resulting from the biomass conversion could be used locally or sold in global markets.

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CHAPTER 6: CONVERSION PROCESSES
Biomass conversion is generally divided into biochemical and thermochemical pathways.
Biochemical pathways rely on living microorganisms—often yeast or bacteria—to process biomass
into more useful forms. Thermochemical pathways involve controlled heating and decompositionof biomass. The optimal conversion technology in any situation depends in part upon the type of
feedstock. The technical maturity of different conversion pathways varies widely.

CHAPTER 7: CARBON SEPARATION AND STORAGE
To achieve true net-zero emissions, carbon removed from below the Earth’s surface by burning
fossil fuels must be balanced by returning carbon below the Earth’s surface or by storing carbon in
long-lived products.
A number of carbon removal methods rely on storing CO2 in plants. Although storage of CO2 in plants
can be cheap and produce ecosystem benefits, the duration of such storage is short, the risk of
release is high and the potential is limited. In contrast, the capacity of the Earth’s crust for durable
storage of CO2 is effectively limitless. Conventional geological storage systems like saline formations
have an estimated storage volume of 10-20 trillion tons—far more than either annual emissions or
total historic emissions.
One of the most promising aspects of BiCRS is the potential for co-location of large biomass supplies
and geological storage resources, particularly where they naturally occur in close proximity to eachother. Several geographies—including the southeast and central US, California, Alberta, southeast
Asia and the North Sea—have high potential for both biomass production and CO2 storage.

CO2 assessments at country or
regional level
Potential sequestration basins
Prospective areas
Non-prospective areas
Countries not studied

Thickness (m)CO2 can also be stored in a number of long-lived products, including concrete, durable carbon,
biochar and long-lived wood products. The capacity of these products to durably store CO2 is far lessthan the capacity of the Earth’s crust.

+

USGS CO2StoP

Consoli, 2016(very)
Full Moderate Limited

Offshore

800
2,000
5,000

Level of knowledge–

CO2 injections
CO2 sequestration
OperatingFutureCompleted
CO2 utilization
CO2-EOR (U.S.)

Figure ES.1. Distribution of conventional CO2 storage worldwide. NOTE: Some areas are not fully
explored and characterized. Source: Kolosz and Wilcox, 20201
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CHAPTER 8: RESEARCH AGENDA
A. Technology
Many BiCRS processes that produce energy are relatively advanced and well understood. In
comparison, many pathways that do not produce energy are under-explored. Biomass can be used
to produce hydrogen, fuels and chemicals, with CO2 emissions captured and stored. Engineeredwood products, bioliquid injection, macroalgae abyssal dispatch and biofiber entombment are newconcepts that need to be evaluated.
Any large-scale implementation will require careful monitoring of land use/land cover (LULC) in all
locations that provide biomass. LULC change can be monitored in a variety of ways, but the mosteffective approach is to use satellite-based remote sensing, which allows global coverage andrelatively high precision.
While significant research attention has been paid to developing crops optimized for energy
production, far less research attention has been paid to developing crops optimized for life-cycle
carbon removal. Such a “carbon-optimized” plant could be part of a BiCRS system that achieves far
higher carbon removal rates than a system using wastes or even conventional dedicated energy
crops.

B. Social Science
Very large-scale deployment of BiCRS could affect food security, clean energy development,
biodiversity, water resources and other services of value to society. Addressing the relationshipbetween these topics will require social science research drawing from a number of disciplines
including economics, political science and sociology, as well as related fields including agronomy,
nutrition, hydrology and engineering.

C. Integrated Analyses
Integrated analyses addressing both technology and social science issues will be required for BiCRS
to scale. Techno-economic assessment, which addresses both technology and economic issues, is
one of the most familiar forms of this type of analysis. In addition, life-cycle greenhouse emissions
analyses will be especially important as BiCRS scales.

POLICY,STANDARDS &SOCIAL SCIENCE

Medium-term(2-8 years)

Study benefits tobiomass-exporting nations
and communities fromBiCRS projects

Improve methodology forassessing indirect land-use
change from BiCRS projects

National governments
adopt incentives forbiomass-based CO2
removal and storage

Leading nations adopt initial
BiCRS biomass standards

Establish UNFCCCBiCRS Platform

Develop a multinational
platform for sharing ofsatellite land use data

Detailed regional models of
BiCRS logistics optimization(energy, feedstock, CO2)

Expand hydrogen andammonia shipping capacityand port infrastructure; plan
key infrastructure elements

Long-term(7-17 years)

Implement multinational
monitoring, reporting &verification (MRV) protocol
for BiCRS market
Implement biomass
sustainability procurement
standards based on
MRV system

Construct BiCRS infrastructure, with an emphasis on
local carbon storage
007

LOGISTICS &TRANSPORT

Near-term(1-3 years)

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viii

Medium-term(2-8 years)

Long-term(7-17 years)

Analyze optimum uses ofwaste biomass and identify
best candidates for
BiCRS feedstock

Develop unconventional
biomass, including GMO,
wet, and marine feedstocks

Demonstrate unconventional
biomass, including GMO,
wet, and marine feedstocks

Pilot modular fast pyrolysis(FP) across a small set ofdesigns and feedstocks

Accelerate improvementfor FP; Pilot projects for
non-energy BiCRS
pathways

Analyze “removal capacity”
of current dedicatedenergy crops

Identify and/or develop“removal-optimized”
dedicated terrestrial
feedstock crops

Demonstrate multi-megaton
CO2 removal projects using
BiCRS in key geographies

Assess co-location of
biomass feedstocks &geological storage

Expand remote sensing
capabilities for land use
monitoring

Deploy remote sensing
capabilities as a coretechnical element of
BiCRS accounting

Figure ES.2. Innovation Roadmap – Biomass Carbon Removal and Storage (BiCRS)

008

FEEDSTOCKS &TECHNOLOGY

Near-term(1-3 years)

CHAPTER 9: POLICY
A. Incentives for Removing Carbon from the Atmosphere
There are small private markets for CO2 removed from the atmosphere, including for enhanced oil
recovery (EOR) and voluntary CO2 offsets, yet these are far too small for BiCRS to scale. Government
policies to provide incentives for carbon removal are essential. Available tools include emissions
trading programs, tax mechanisms and mandates.

B. Support for Development and Deployment
BiCRS facilities are large and capital intensive. First-of-a-kind BiCRS facilities are unlikely to be able toattract private capital in amounts sufficient for initial deployment. Governments play a central rolein supporting deployment of such projects. Government support for deployment can take several
forms, including tax incentives, grants, loan guarantees, revenue enhancements and procurement
preferences.

C. Standard-Setting
BiCRS projects raise challenging issues with respect to measuring, monitoring and crediting ofcarbon removal. These issues involve a complex interplay of scientific, technical, socio-economic andinstitutional factors.
Measuring the life-cycle emissions of a BiCRS project is essential. This process is mostly similar tolifecycle measurements for other projects, although it becomes more complicated when energy
crops or timber are used as feedstocks. Complications arise because the use of land to grow energy
crops or timber for BiCRS projects may lead to clearing of forests—where the energy crops or timber
are grown (direct land-use change) or in distant places (indirect land-use change)—offsetting theemissions benefits associated with the BiCRS project.
One critical issue is the time frame in which to measure carbon neutrality. If timber is burned andtakes 40 years to grow back, is that process carbon neutral? How should the risk of forest fires orother forest loss during those 40 years be addressed?
Crediting for carbon removal can create some conceptual challenges, especially when biomass isbeing shipped internationally to a BiCRS facility. Which country should receive the credit for the
carbon removal? Which should be charged for any emissions related to harvesting the feedstock?
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Developing standards in these areas will be a multi-year process. The UN Framework Convention on
Climate Change (UNFCCC) could create a BiCRS platform similar to its REDD+ Platform as a venue forinternational dialogue and standard-setting related to BiCRS.

CHAPTER 10: FINDING AND RECOMMENDATIONSFINDING 1:

Several gigatons of CO2 could be removed from the atmosphere and stored underground or in longlived products each year using biomass produced with minimal environmental impacts.

FINDING 2:

Energy production is not the only way that biomass can be used in combination with carbon capture
to store CO2 underground or in long-lived products.

FINDING 3:

Governance and accounting issues are key challenges to BiCRS and may set its practical limits.

FINDING 4:

The carbon removal value of biomass may increasingly exceed its energy value.

FINDING 5:

Many technologies and practices required for BiCRS are already mature.

FINDING 6:

Launch a BiCRS Platform modeled after its REDD+ Platform as a global venue for this dialogue.

FINDING 7:

Without proper governance and standards, BiCRS could be counterproductive with respect toclimate mitigation, biodiversity conservation, food security and rural livelihoods.

Recommendation 1:
We introduce a new term—biomass carbon removal and storage (BiCRS). We recommend adoptionof this term and the approach it reflects in considering the potential role of biomass in achieving
net-zero global greenhouse gas emissions.

Recommendation 2:
We recommend that development of BiCRS technologies and projects focus first on waste biomass.

Recommendation 3:
We recommend a framework in which projects start with the guiding principle “Do no harm.”

Recommendation 4:
We recommend an innovation roadmap for BiCRS, focusing on hydrogen, fast pyrolysis and selected
non-energy pathways.

Recommendation 5:

We recommend a targeted effort to develop monitoring, reporting and verification (MRV) for BiCRS.

Recommendation 6:
We recommend a set of nations and companies lead development of the frameworks,
methodologies and standards that must underlie gigaton-scale BiCRS as an industry.
1

Kolosz, B. and Wilcox, J. (eds), 2020 (in press), A primer on Carbon Dioxide Removal.

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CHAPTER 1:
INTRODUCTION
A New Term: Biomass Carbon Removaland Storage (BiCRS).
This roadmap introduces a new term: biomass carbon
removal and storage (BiCRS). The term describes a rangeof processes that use plants and algae to remove carbon
dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere and store that CO2
underground or in long-lived products. These processes
have the potential to contribute to the vital goal ofreaching net-zero emissions of heat-trapping gases
globally by mid-century.
We started out to write a roadmap on bioenergy carbon
capture and storage (BECCS). That term is commonlyused for most of the processes we describe. BECCS has
been part of the dialogue on climate change mitigation
for several decades and plays an important role in many
integrated assessment models that explore pathways to
net-zero emissions. Today a handful of facilities aroundthe world have deployed BECCS processes.
However, after analysis, we believe the term “BECCS” is
too limited and has the wrong emphasis. BECCS starts
with “bioenergy,” implying that energy production is themost important part of processes that use biomass tocapture and store CO2. But that is not always the case.
Indeed in some instances—such as using biochar to

January 2021

improve soil fertility—biomass can be used to captureand store carbon without energy production. And evenwhen bioenergy production is coupled with carbon
capture and storage (CCS), the removal of carbon fromthe atmosphere—not the production of energy—will
often be the most valuable part of the process. (Mostbiomass has poor energy value but high carbon value.)Thus we start by asking “How can biomass best be used
for removal of carbon from the atmosphere and storageof that carbon for the long-term?,” introducing the term
“biomass carbon removal and storage” or “BiCRS.”
This question immediately raises others. Experienceduring the past several decades suggests importantquestions about the extent to whWich biomass canbe used to help fight climate change without reducing
cropland, hurting rural livelihoods or threatening
biodiversity. So the full question we ask is “How canbiomass best be used for removal of carbon from theatmosphere and storage of that carbon for the long-term
without damaging—and ideally while promoting—foodsecurity, rural livelihoods, biodiversity conservation andother important values?”
We therefore define BiCRS as a process that:(a) uses biomass to remove CO2 from the atmosphere,(b) stores that CO2 underground or in long-lived
products, and(c) does no damage to—and ideally promotes—foodsecurity, rural livelihoods, biodiversity conservationand other important values.

1Our analysis suggests that BiCRS processes could captureand store 2.5-5.0 gigatons of CO2 annually (GtCO2/y) by
mid-century. Although this figure is more modest thanthose used in some integrated assessment models for
BECCS (which range as high as 20 GtCO2/y), BiCRS could
be an important part of global efforts to achieve net-zeroemissions in the decades ahead.
Yet much work remains to achieve CO2 capture andstorage of 2.5-5.0 gigatons per year. Some of thiswork is technological. Cost reductions in a number oftechnology pathways for capturing and storing carbon
would help BiCRS scale. The harder work, however, islikely to be institutional and political. For BiCRS to reachits full potential, new institutional arrangements andbroad consensus among a wide range of stakeholders
would be required.

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This roadmap explores these issues. We start byoffering an ideal vision of what BiCRS might look like inmidcentury. We then provide background, including ashort history of the role of BECCS in the global climate
dialogue, list of related facilities currently in operationand comparison of the value of using biomass for carbon
removal with the value of using biomass for energy
production. In Chapter 3, we discuss the rationale forand risks of BiCRS. Chapters 4-7 address a number ofcore issues with respect to BiCRS, including biomass
availability, transport, conversion processes, and CO2
separation and storage. Chapter 8 describes a research
agenda and Chapter 9 explores policy issues that will becentral to BiCRS’ ability to scale. In Chapter 10, we offer
findings and recommendations.

2B. BiCRS 2050: An Ideal Vision
What could BiCRS look like in 2050? We offer the following ideal vision—a speech that could perhaps be deliveredthat year.

UN Framework Convention on Climate Change
55th Conference of the Parties (COP 55)
December 2050
Address of the President,
Biomass Carbon Removal and Storage (BiCRS) Coalition
At this conference, we are celebrating the world achieving net-zero greenhouse gas emissions—a goal many once
thought impossible. Today, let us also celebrate the important role that biomass carbon removal and storage (BiCRS) is
playing in the world achieving that goal.
Many people know very little about BiCRS. Let me explain how BiCRS removes several billion tons of carbon dioxide(CO2) from the atmosphere each year—a number that will grow in the years ahead.
Three decades ago, when I began my career, many people thought this was impossible. They thought that biomass
feedstocks could not be produced at a scale sufficient to make a difference in climate mitigation. They thoughtbiomass production for carbon removal would lead indirectly to destruction of tropical forests and increases infood prices. They thought transportation of biomass to processing facilities on a mass scale was impractical without
significant carbon emissions. They thought programs for crediting countries with emissions reductions related to
BiCRS would be too complicated and prone to manipulation.
But we have overcome these challenges.
We start with the sustainable production of biomass. This comes from many sources:■ Wastes and residues■ Dedicated carbon-removal crops■ Managed forests■ Microalgae■ Seaweed/macroalgae■ Agricultural wastes in California, sustainably managed plantations in Canada and Indonesia, and seaweed in Japan’s

Exclusive Economic Zone are just some of the leading examples of sustainable sources of biomass.
Production of this biomass contributes to local livelihoods and economies, with careful attention to protecting socialand environmental values. After harvest, the biomass is shipped to conversion facilities. Because carbon removal isa core goal, we are rigorous about ensuring that CO2 emissions associated with shipping are zero or close to zero.
That means co-locating carbon removal facilities with the biomass source where feasible. It means using zero-carbon
fuels for transporting biomass when co-location is not feasible. (These zero-carbon fuels include green hydrogen, theprimary fuel for long-distance marine shipping around the world today.) Many organizations help track the harvesting
and transport of biomass, sharing data to ensure that harvested land is sustainably replanted and natural ecosystems
remain undisturbed.
Once biomass arrives at conversion facilities, the carbon it contains is converted thermochemically, biochemically or
through combustion. Some of these facilities make products with commercial value. These products include fuels thatwere once made with coal, oil and gas, helping displace emissions that might otherwise come from the combustion offossil fuels. Other products include power, heat, construction materials and biochar.
As a final step, CO2 at these facilities is either captured and pumped underground for permanent geologic storage orconverted into long-lasting products in which the carbon is trapped for decades or centuries.
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None of this would be possible without some key building blocks.
■ Incentives for carbon removal in national legislation throughcarbon pricing, regulatory standards and other policy tools■ Widely-recognized international standards for sustainableproduction of biomass, including land-use change constraints andecosystem protections■ Satellite monitoring of forests globally to provide transparency
and help evaluate whether biomass is being sustainably managed■ A global agreement on crediting of biomass removal whenbiomass is grown in one country and its CO2 is stored in another country

How did we get here?
Several advances during the 2020s were key to BiCRS’ success. These advances included widespread adoptionof international standards for sustainable biomass use, enabled by improvements in satellite monitoring to trackland-use change and enable tree-indexed carbon quantification for the first time. Technical advances allowing cheap
production of microalgae on land and macroalgae in the oceans played an important role as well. Expanded hydrogentransportation and use in industrial processes was another important factor. The harmonized accounting systems forbiomass removal and storage introduced by several leading accounting firms and later adopted by UNEP was also key.
However it was in the early 2030s that BiCRS really began to reach maturity. The seven largest biomass-buying nations
met with the seven largest biomass-producing nations to develop the Global Sustainable Biomass Standards. That clubof 14 nations set the rules for sustainable harvesting, accounting systems for local CO2 storage, and carbon intensity
standards of key goods traded on exchanges around the world. Core elements included the ban on harvesting primary
forests for BiCRS, the ban on harvesting peat-forests for BiCRS and the Biomass/Biodiversity Compact, highlighting thehigh priority all BiCRS stakeholders attach to protecting wildlife and biodiversity.
Today millions of BiCRS certificates trade on exchanges around the world daily. And BiCRS is contributing to local
economies, promoting the just treatment of indigenous peoples, and helping protect ecosystems around the world—
while also helping the world achieve net-zero emissions of heat-trapping gases. I hope you’re all proud of the role
you’ve played in making this a reality.
And these programs have not just helped clean up the atmosphere, they have created good jobs in rural areas,
empowering land-owners to use their land to benefit the environment. Today collectives of small farmers andranchers can decide whether to sell their biomass around the world or create BiRCS facilities locally and sell thecredits for the same benefit.
Worldwide monitoring of these biomass markets ensures that they are helpful to both the local environment and the
local population, cutting off crediting when this is not the case. Wastes are no longer burned in open fires or allowed
to decay to methane-rich gases, turning additional agricultural material into value. And the energy products produced
are either carbon neutral or carbon negative. Moreover, global trade in biomass and carbon dioxide removal (CDR)
credits has allowed many developing nations of the world to benefit financially from contributing to the fight against
climate change.
The most important part of our path to this point was when we agreed that CO2 removal must begin withconsideration of preventing harm to ecosystems, enabling good governance at the local and the global level, ensuring
energy and economic returns, and understanding the stocks and flows of biological systems. With these worldwide
understandings and constraints, biomass has become a powerful contributor to the mitigation of climate change andgeneral increase of world welfare.
But our work is not done. In the years ahead let us continue to find ways for BiCRS to contribute to the fight against
climate change while contributing to rural livelihoods, promoting food security and protecting biological diversity.
The planet’s atmosphere, ecosystems and economies can be brought into harmony if we continue the good work wehave begun.
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C. Guiding Principles
The use of biomass for climate mitigation has generated
controversy for many years.1 Advocates have argued thatstrategies such as avoided deforestation, afforestation
and BECCS could provide multiple benefits, including
cheap emissions reductions, low-cost removal of CO2
from the atmosphere, biodiversity conservation andsustainable livelihoods. Critics have highlighted risks,
including competition with food resources, adverse
impacts on rural communities (see Eco-colonialism box),
slowing the steps needed to transition from fossil fuels,
and indirect land-use change reducing or eliminatingclaimed climate benefits.
In preparing this document, we have been mindfulof this ongoing dialogue. In particular, we have been
mindful of the fact that large-scale implementation of
BiCRS could raise many of the concerns cited above.
In considering approaches to BiCRS, we have been
guided by three principles that we commend to others
considering these topics as well:First, do no harm. We support application of aprecautionary principle in scaling up BiCRS. If a project

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threatens food security, rural livelihoods or biodiversity
conservation, for example, it does not qualify as a BiCRS
project and should not be pursued.
Second, social acceptability is key to BiCRS’ success.
Without support and demand from a wide range ofstakeholders, BiCRS processes will not and should notreach significant scale.
Third, technology development should reflect social
priorities. Technologies should not be pursued for theirown sake, but in the context of the social situations
in which they will be deployed. In particular, thesetechnologies should actively contribute to achieving the
economic and social goals of the communities who aremost impacted by their installation and operation.
We believe BiCRS has considerable potential tocontribute to the fight against climate change if thesethree principles are followed.
1

Carton, Wim, Adeniyi Asiyanbi, Silke Beck, Holly J. Buck, andJens F. Lund. “Negative Emissions and the Long History of
Carbon Removal.” WIREs Climate Change (August 2020) at
p. e671 (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/
wcc.671).

5

CHAPTER 2:BACKGROUND
A. A Short History of BECCS in the Global
Climate Dialogue
In 2001, Michael Obersteiner and Kenneth Mollersten
published an article in Science arguing that“biomass energy can be used both to produce
carbon neutral energy carriers, e.g., electricity andhydrogen, and at the same time offer a permanent
CO2 sink by capturing carbon from the biomass at
the conversion facility and permanently storing it ingeological formations…”1David Keith made a similar point in a commentaryin Climatic Change the same year.2 In the years that
followed, BECCS as a concept for CO2 removal andenergy production had adherents (e.g., Williams, 19983;
Socolow and Pacala, 20044) but largely remained amarginal option.
BECCS’ role in the global climate dialogue changed
between 2012 and 2017 for two reasons. First, BECCS
grew in global prominence with the ribbon cutting of thefirst commercial-scale BECCS facility—the Archer Daniels
Midland project in Decatur, Illinois.5 This facility gathered
byproduct CO2 from fermentation and stored roughly
1 million tons CO2 per year (MtCO2/y) in a deep saline
formation. With the commissioning and safe operationof this plant, capture and storage of carbon frombiomass was no longer a hypothetical option but, rather,a viable functioning approach with well understood costs
for at least one case.
Second, BECCS featured prominently in integrated
assessment models (IAMs) associated with deep
decarbonization, especially in advance of theIntergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)
2014 and 1.5 °C reports (e.g., Minx et al., 20176). The
inclusion of BECCS was partly due to the fact that thecomputational modules needed to represent bothbioenergy and CCS already existed in many IAMs, making
it easy to add BECCS to the modeling framework. Thisease of implementation in the analytical models meantthat BECCS soon became the primary pathway forcarbon removal in IAMs.7

January 2021

Unfortunately, many models allocated very large andunrealistic volumes of carbon removal to BECCS (seeMuratori et al., 20168). Many studies responded to thisartificial inflation of BECCS by explaining why BECCS
alone would face enormous challenges managing 10
GtCO2/y removal (e.g., Gough et al., 20189). The initial(and problematic) forecasted role for BECCS has led
to broad discussion of what would actually constitutereasonable, appropriate and ethical biomass conversion
and CO2 removal.
Today, there is no consensus view on this question andmany uncertainties remain concerning both technicaland governance issues. One key dimension of these
discussions is the physical and ecological limit of biomass
production, but other equally important dimensions
include macroeconomic questions around the relativevalue of energy from biomass, concerns regarding
ecosystem degradation risk, the potential impacts oncommunities that are now or would be harvestingbiomass, consequences for food and fiber availability
and costs, and a host of related concerns. Our conceptof BiCRS shares many similarities with BECCS but isdesigned to respond to the important concerns andconstraints that have been realized since Obersteinerand Mollersten’s 2001 article. In some situations thisrequires a ground-up reimagination of biomass-based
CO2 removal and storage systems, while in others only
minor tweaks are required.

B. Biogenic CO2 Sequestration Facilities
Today
Relatively few commercial-scale facilities thatsequester biogenic carbon are in operation today. We
estimate ~2.5 MtCO2/y of biogenic carbon is currently
sequestered each year by such facilities, with as much as
25 MtCO2/y in planning or development (Table 2.1). We
note that 2.5 MtCO2/y is 1000-2000 times smaller than
BiCRS’ 2.5-5.0 GtCO2/y potential (see Chapter 4).
To our knowledge, the only nation with a comprehensive
plan for implementing true negative emissions throughbiomass-based processes is Sweden.10 That plan
outlines how Sweden’s forest resources can be used in
BiCRS-type processes to achieve 1.8 MtCO2/y of negativeemissions by 2030 and 3-10 MtCO2/y by 2045.
Facilities that currently sequester biogenic carbon
include several ethanol plants in the US, where federal
and many state policies provide support, as well as6

Conversion
Technology

Combustion
w/CCS

Existing
Negative
Emissions[MtCO2/yr]

1.2

PlannedNegative
Emissions[MtCO2/yr]

16

NumberofCompanies
3(1 biomass,
2 municipal
solid waste[MSW])

Gasificationto-fuels
w/CCS

n/a

6

(3 biomass,
1 MSW)

Ethanol w/
CCS

1.3

2.1

3

Pyrolysis w/
bio-oil CCS

0.01

Unknown

1

Biochar0.01

Unknown

Unknown

Table 2.1. Summary of existing and planned capacity forsequestration of biogenic carbon

energy using biomass. However, under reasonableassumptions, the value of using biomass for removing
carbon from the atmosphere may exceed the value ofusing biomass for energy. (The authors have labeled thisthe “Aines Principle,” after our co-author Roger Aines
who first proposed it.) This observation suggests theneed for a paradigm shift in thinking about the optimal
uses of biomass resources.
To illustrate this, we note that one oven-dry ton (odt)of biomass contains approximately 18 GJ of energy. It
also contains approximately 0.5 tons of carbon (biomassis roughly half carbon by weight), which is equivalent
to 1.8 tons of CO2.12 In Figure 2.1, we show the valueof the CO2 contained in a ton of biomass for a range ofpotential CO2 prices (expressed as US dollars per tonof CO2 or $/tCO2), as well as the value of the energy
contained in a ton of biomass. To estimate the energy
value, we use the value of 18 GJ of natural gas, crudeoil, steam coal and wood pellet feedstock (the “energy
content equivalent value”). This analysis shows thefollowing:■ Above a carbon price of approximately 25 $/tCO2, theseveral waste-to-energy plants in northern Europe,
where burning municipal solid waste to produce
electricity is a mature industry. (Municipal solid waste[MSW] in Europe typically contains 60-80% paper, yard
waste or food waste.11) In addition, several very small
facilities use pyrolysis with bio-oils and CCS, and others
produce biochar for use in soils. The Drax power stationin the UK, which burns wood pellets imported from theUS, is currently piloting carbon capture and plans tosequester CO2 underground in the future (Table 2.2).

carbon content of biomass is more valuable than theequivalent energy content of bituminous steam coal(at 60 $/ton) and wood pellet feedstock (at 30 $/ton)■ Above a carbon price of approximately 35 $/tCO2,
the carbon content of biomass is more valuable thanthe equivalent energy content of natural gas (at 4 $/MMBtu)■ Above a carbon price of approximately 65 $/tCO2, thecarbon content of biomass is more valuable than theequivalent energy content of crude oil (at 40 $/barrel)

While these facilities sequester biogenic carbon, they
may or may not meet the standards for a BiCRS facility(doing no damage to—and ideally promoting—foodsecurity, rural livelihoods, biodiversity conservation andother important values).

Both carbon and energy prices vary significantly by
jurisdiction and over time.13 However, carbon prices arelikely to rise in the future. As political and ecologicalpressure mounts, the economic value of CO2 removal willcontinue to grow. Although there is no long-term futures
market for CO2 removal, it is reasonable to anticipate
that the market value of CO2 removal will increase in thenext decade. If that happens, the carbon-removal valueof biomass may increasingly exceed its energy value. Thisimplies that biomass used in processes that sequester
carbon may be more valuable for this environmental
service than for any energy services it provides.

C. Relative Value of Carbon Removal andEnergy from Biomass
BiCRS processes use biomass to provide anenvironmental service—the removal of CO2 from theatmosphere and storage of that carbon below the
Earth’s surface or in long-lived products. In the dialogue
around BECCS, that environmental service has mostly
been thought of as incidental to the production ofJanuary 2021

Analysts have used a number of approaches to estimate
the current value of a ton of carbon removal:

7

Company/
Project
Name

Technology

Project
StatusCurrently
Storing
CO2Country

FeedstockPrimary
Product

Capacityfor Major
Product

Geologic
Sequestration
at Scale[MtCO2/yr]

Drax

Combustion
with geologic
sequestration

Pilot,
full-scaleannounced

No

England

Wood

Electricty

2.6 GWe

16

TwenceCombustion
with geologic
sequestration

Pilot

No

Netherlands

Municipal
solid waste(MSW)

Electricty& heat405 GWhe,
1.5 PJ heat

0.042

FortumCombustion
Oslo Varme with geologic
sequestration

Full-scaledemonstration

No

NorwayMunicipal
solid waste(MSW)

Electricty& heat10.5 MWe,
55 MW heat

0.2

ArcherDaniels
MidlandEthanol withgeologic
sequestration

Operational

Yes

US

Corn

Corn
ethanol

300 Mgal/yr

1

Arkalon

Ethanol withenhanced oil
recoveryOperational

Yes

US

Corn

Corn
ethanol

110 Mgal/yr

0.17

Bonanza

Ethanol withenhanced oil
recoveryOperational

Yes

US

Corn

Corn
ethanol

55 Mgal/yr

0.1

White
EnergyPlainview

Ethanol withenhanced oil
recoveryIn
planning

No

US

Corn

Corn
ethanol

120 Mgal/yr

0.342

White
EnergyHereford

Ethanol withenhanced oil
recoveryIn
planning

No

US

Corn

Corn
ethanol

120 Mgal/yr

0.342

Table 2.2. Existing facilities with capture and/or geologic sequestration of biogenic CO2■ Social cost of carbon: This is perhaps the mostcommon approach. Due to the enormous range of
input assumptions about future climate damage,estimates vary widely (from $1/ton to at least$10,000/ton14).
■ Compared to other options: Another approachcompares CO2 removal to other mitigation options,either through integrated assessment models of global
economic systems15 or through estimation of global
marginal abatement costs.16,17■ What markets will bear: In carbon markets such as
the California carbon offset market and the European
Trading Scheme, the weighted average price of carbon
is in the range of $20-$21 per ton.18 Within the CA
Low Carbon Fuel Standard, current CO2 abatement
prices trade at $150-200/ton, although these must be
monetized through a fuel sold in California. Prior andexisting climate policies provide an enormous range ofvalue by technology option, including subsidies well inexcess of $1000/ton.19
January 2021

■ What companies will pay: Early actions by somecompanies reveal a demand for CO2 removal services.
In particular, some tech companies, power companies
and industrial manufacturers have made commitments
to net-zero emissions and have overtly included CO2
removal in their estimates. Some have expressed awillingness to pay above-market prices to stimulatetechnology development and deployment.20 For
comparison, the internal carbon prices (shadow prices)announced by companies range from $40-80/ton.

1

Obersteiner, M., Ch. Azar, P. Kauppi, K. Möllersten, J.
Moreira, S. Nilsson, P. Read, et al. “Managing Climate Risk.”
Science 294, no. 5543 (2001) at p. 786-87 (https://science.
sciencemag.org/content/294/5543/786.2).

2

Keith, David W. “Sinks, Energy Crops and Land Use: Coherent
Climate Policy Demands an Integrated Analysis of Biomass.”
Climatic Change 49, no. 1 (April 2001) at p. 1-10 (https://link.
springer.com/article/10.1023/A:1010617015484).

8

Value of carbon removal($/ton biomass)

200

Value of CO2 removal

150
Oil ($40/barrel)
100
Gas ($4/MMBtu)
Coal ($60/ton)50

Pellet ($30/ton)
0
10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

100

110

Carbon price ($/ton CO2)

Figure 2.1. Comparison of the carbon-removal value of biomass with the energy content equivalent value of biomass for arange of carbon prices. Natural gas value: 4 $/MMBtu; crude oil value: 40 $/barrel; steam coal (bituminous) value: 60 $/ton;wood pellet feedstock: 30 $/ton.
3

Williams, Robert H. “Fuel Decarbonization for Fuel Cell
Applications and Sequestration of the Separated CO2.” Chap.
6 (Part 1: Restructuring Resource Use) In Ecorestructuring:
Implications for Sustainable Development by Robert U. Ayres,edited by Paul M. Weaver, 417: United Nation University
Press, 1998.

4

Pacala, S., and R. Socolow. “Stabilization Wedges: Solving
the Climate Problem for the Next 50 Years with Current
Technologies.” Science 305, no. 5686 (2004) at p. 968-72(https://science.sciencemag.org/content/305/5686/968).

5

6

7

8

9

Gough, Clair, Samira Garcia-Freites, Christopher Jones,
Sarah Mander, Brendan Moore, Cristina Pereira, Mirjam
Röder, Naomi Vaughan, and Andrew Welfle. “Challenges tothe Use of Beccs as a Keystone Technology in Pursuit of 1.5
⁰c.” Global Sustainability 1 (2018) at p. e5 (https://www.
cambridge.org/core/journals/global-sustainability/article/
challenges-to-the-use-of-beccs-as-a-keystone-technology-inpursuit-of-15c/5E8AE2ECC9DCACB5DFE4B97BBE70476D).

10 Vägen till en klimatpositiv framtid. (English

translation: “The road to a climate positive
future.”) https://www.regeringen.se/48ec20/
contentassets/1c43bca1d0e74d44af84a0e2387bfbcc/vagentill-en-klimatpositiv-framtid-sou-20204. (See page 69 for acomprehensive summary in English).

National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL). “Archer
Daniels Midland Company: CO2 Capture from Biofuels
Production and Storage into the Mt. Simon Sandstone.”(Factsheet, 2017); https://www.netl.doe.gov/sites/default/
files/netl-file/FE0001547-Factsheet.pdf.

11 Scarlat, N., Fahl, F., & Dallemand, J. F. (2019). Status andMinx, Jan C., William F. Lamb, Max W. Callaghan, Lutz
Bornmann, and Sabine Fuss. “Fast Growing Research on
Negative Emissions.” Environmental Research Letters 12, no.
3 (March 2017) at p. 035007 (https://iopscience.iop.org/
article/10.1088/1748-9326/aa5ee5/meta).

12 Schlesinger, William H. and Emily S. Bernhardt.

Kemper, Jasmin. “Biomass and Carbon Dioxide Captureand Storage: A Review.” International Journal ofGreenhouse Gas Control 40 (September 2015) at p.
401-30 (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/
S1750583615002650?via%3Dihub).
Muratori, Matteo, Katherine Calvin, Marshall Wise, Page
Kyle, and Jae Edmonds. “Global Economic Consequencesof Deploying Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage(Beccs).” Environmental Research Letters 11, no. 9(August 2016) at p. 095004 (https://iopscience.iop.org/
article/10.1088/1748-9326/11/9/095004).

January 2021

opportunities for energy recovery from municipal solid
waste in Europe. Waste and Biomass Valorization, 10(9),2425-2444 (https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/
s12649-018-0297-7).
Biogeochemistry: An Analysis of Global Change. 3rd ed.
Elsevier Inc., 224 Wyman Street, Waltham, MA 02451, USA:
2013 (https://doi.org/10.1016/C2010-0-66291-2).

13 Friedmann, Julio S., Zhiyuan Fan, Zachary Byrum, Emeka

Ochu, Amar Bhardwaj, and Hadia Sheerazi. “Levelized Costof Carbon Abatement: A cost-assessment methodology for a
net-zero emissions world.” Center on Global Energy Center
Report, October 2020 (https://doi.org/10.1080/14693062.2
019.1634508).

9

14 Office of the President, 2016, Technical Support Document:

Technical Update of the Social Cost of Carbon for Regulatory
Impact Analysis Under Executive Order 12866, Interagency
Working Group on Social Cost of Greenhouse Gases,
United States Government, https://obamawhitehouse.
archives.gov/sites/default/files/omb/inforeg/scc_tsd_final_
clean_8_26_16.pdf.

15 Fuss, Sabine et al. 2018. “Negative emissions—Part 2: Costs,

potentials, and side effects.” Environmental Research Letters
13 (https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/
aabf9f).

16 McKinsey and Company. Pathways to a low-carbon

economy: Version 2 of the global greenhouse gas abatement
cost curve. (New York: McKinsey and Company, 2009).
https://www.mckinsey.com/~/media/mckinsey/dotcom/
client_service/sustainability/cost%20curve%20pdfs/
pathways_lowcarbon_economy_version2.ashx.

17 Goldman Sachs. 2020. Carbonomics: The Green Engineof Economic Recovery. Goldman Sachs Report. https://www.goldmansachs.com/insights/pages/gs-research/carbonomics- green-engine-of-economic-recovery-f/report.
pdf.

January 2021

18 Reed Shapiro, “Value of Carbon Market Update 2020,”

Carbon Credit Capital (September 3, 2020), https://carboncreditcapital.com/value-of-carbon-market-update2020/#:~:text=According%20to%20IHS%20Markit’s%20
Global,shown%20in%20the%20chart%20below).

19 Gillingham, K. and J.H. Stock. “The Cost of Reducing

Greenhouse Gas Emissions.” Journal of Economic
Perspectives 32 (4) at p. 53–72 (https://scholar.harvard.edu/
stock/publications/cost- reducing-greenhouse-gas-emissions;Friedmann, S.J., Zapantis A., Page, B., Consoli C., Havercroft
I., Raji N., Fan, Z., Ochu, E.R., Sheerazi, H.A., Rasool, D.,
Townsend A., 2020 (in press), Net-zero and geosphericreturn: Actions today for 2030 and Beyond, Center on Global
Energy Policy Report, https://www.energypolicy.columbia.
edu/research/report/net-zero-and-geospheric-returnactions-today-2030-and-beyond.

20 Microsoft. “Microsoft will be carbon negative by 2030,”

Microsoft Official Blog. January 16, 2020. https://blogs.
microsoft.com/blog/2020/01/16/microsoft-will-be-carbonnegative-by-2030/

10

CHAPTER 3:
BiCRS – RATIONALE
AND RISKS
A. Rationale for BiCRS
Removing CO2 from the air and oceans is necessary tomeet global climate goals. The scale of the endeavor isdaunting. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change (IPCC), “All pathways that limit global
warming to 1.5 °C with limited or no overshoot project
the use of carbon dioxide removal (CDR) on the order of
100-1000 GtCO2 over the 21st century.”1
Three major approaches for removing CO2 from theatmosphere have been proposed: (1) natural solutions(forests, soils and wetlands), (2) engineered methods
to directly remove CO2 from the air (such as direct air
capture), and (3) hybrid approaches (such as BiCRS). All
three require significant investment and development
for the world to meet agreed climate change targets.
In this report, we provide a roadmap for using biomass
to remove carbon from the atmosphere at scale andstore it for the long-term. Because of the historicalimportance of modern bioenergy, electricity has been an
early focus of the literature in this field. However, if thegoal is to remove CO2 from the air and store it long-term,
the focus should be on maximizing the carbon removed
from the air while minimizing costs and promoting otherbeneficial activities. As discussed above, we call thisapproach biomass carbon removal and storage (BiCRS),
to emphasize that the goal is not to use biomass tocreate energy (particularly given the plunging costs ofsolar and wind energy) but as a means to take advantageof the very efficient system of capturing CO2 that nature
has provided with carbon-based biomass. Our goal is
to take advantage of that system in an appropriate way,providing carbon removal and long-term storage ofbiogenic carbon.
We believe all three approaches to carbon removal will
be needed in the decades ahead. A balance of cost,societal factors, environmental impacts and land use
must be considered for each approach, with the ultimate
degree of usage depending on this balance. For instance,
natural solutions have environmental and social benefits
January 2021

that may far outweigh the relatively low costs but areoften limited by land availability. Direct air capture
will likely be the most expensive approach but can be
deployed at almost unlimited scale. There are no easysolutions for cleaning up the excess CO2 in the air. Allavailable and imagined methods have costs, benefits andlimitations.
Hybrid approaches fall between the other two in termsof cost and have substantial advantages and risks.
They have significant potential today because manymethods for collecting and converting biomass are
well-established. (Methods for capturing and storing
the CO2 need more attention.) This is one reason why
the relatively simple concept of BECCS has gotten somuch attention. Through farming, forestry and waste
management, the world generates large volumes ofwaste biomass that could immediately be used as asource of carbon storage. Much of this waste biomass
is a problem today, either because it is burned orlandfilled, where it emits methane as well as CO2.
BiCRS processes affect the carbon cycle throughconversion of biomass and storage of biogenic carbon
in geologic reservoirs or long-lived products. Amongengineered carbon removal options, BiCRS offers thedual benefit of decreasing the flow of geologic carbon
to the atmosphere through substitution for fossil fuels
and increasing the flow of atmospheric carbon into longterm storage. Some BiCRS processes offer additional
value from energy and fuels production or conversionof biomass into biochar, construction materials or otherdurable products. Other BiCRS processes directly store
biomass for long periods of time without additional
benefit.
If properly developed, regulated and monitored, BiRCS
could contribute many gigatons of carbon removal while
promoting economic development around the world.
This could proceed in three stages:
1. Application of existing technology to waste biomass
widely available around the world. Some of this will
be done in advance of the development of widelyaccepted standards and will inform those standards.
2. Development of improved technologies and widelyaccepted standards for the use of biomass as aclimate mitigation tool, providing confidence thatbiomass-based approaches can be effective andappropriate.

11

■ Development of new economic models in whichbiomass is harvested without adverse impacts andeither (a) processed locally with sale of credits that
represent true removal of CO2 from the air or (b)traded to provide feedstock for carbon removal, as
well as hydrogen, fuels, power and other products inindustries that improve the quality of the atmosphereinstead of degrading it.

B. Risks of BiCRS
Production of some types of biomass—including somededicated energy crops—can damage ecosystems, hurt
local farmers and increase global carbon emissions.
Policies to promote such production can have significant
negative impacts. Critics have argued that US ethanol
policy (and EU biodiesel policy), for example, havecontributed to deforestation and had little if any positive
impact on global carbon emissions.2
Successful deployment of biomass conversion for
carbon removal must begin by preventing harm toecosystems, ensuring economic returns, and delivering
net carbon removal from the atmosphere. For biomass
conversion to serve carbon removal needs, avoiding
a set of potential failure modes is essential. Examplesof potential failure modes to be avoided include thefollowing:■ Damage to ecosystems. Biomass cultivation for

carbon removal could damage productive anddiverse ecosystems on land or in the oceans.

January 2021

Possible outcomes include replacement of diverse
ecosystems with monocultures, long-term lossesof carrying capacity or productivity, infestations,fires, and degradation of water and soil. Integrated
environmental assessment models will be an
important tool for evaluating potential damage.
■ No CO2 removal benefit. While it is possible tocultivate biomass for carbon removal so that thelife-cycle emissions are negative, that result is notguaranteed. A poor understanding of emissions in
the biomass life-cycle—including in particular the
implications of indirect land-use change—and flawed
implementation could lead to biomass conversion
projects resulting in a net increase of CO2 emissions.
■ Adverse impacts on food security. Biomass
conversion projects could compete with foodproduction for arable land, increasing food prices
and adversely affecting food security for vulnerable
populations.
■ Eco-colonialism. (See box 3–1.)
1

IPCC, Global Warming of 1.5 °C: Summary for Policy Makers(2018) at p.19, htp://report.ipcc.ch/sr15/pdf/ sr15_spm_
fnal.pdf.

2

Bicalho, Tereza, Cécile Bessou, and Sergio A. Pacca.
“Land Use Change within EU Sustainability Criteria for
Biofuels: The Case of Oil Palm Expansion in the Brazilian
Amazon.” Renewable Energy 89 (April 2016) at p. 588-97(https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/
S096014811530522X?via%3Dihub).

12BOX 3-1 Eco-colonialism
Colonialism is the domination of one people by another, typically involving the domination of people in developing
countries by those in developed countries. Eco-colonialism is a type of colonialism in which the natural resources indeveloping countries are appropriated for the benefit of those in developed countries—often without meaningfulconsent by those who live near the resources. The impacts of eco-colonialism have included the following:■ Lasting damage to natural resources (forests, soils, water)■ Unsustainable practices, leading to ecosystem collapse■ Political corruption, specifically associated with natural resource extraction■ Unfair labor practices and deep systemic inequality■ Lasting negative health effects on local populations■ Local environmental degradation (e.g., to air and water quality)■ Disregard to local impacts on population or indigenous industries■ Permanent loss of biodiversity

The global growth of BiCRS could lead to the risk of eco-colonialism, which must be addressed carefully andthoughtfully. Exports of biomass from developing to developed nations creates risks of exploitation, damage tohabitats and ecosystems, and the impacts listed above. These risks are present even if developed
countries purchase biomass to help remove CO2 from the atmosphere—a global public
good. Many communities in developing countries would benefit from climate mitigation,
but the damages they suffer from exploitive resource acquisition practices may outweigh those benefits. Standards and procedures are needed to prevent these harms.
Similar scenarios have occurred in nations including Indonesia, as developed
nations’ demand for palm oil and timber has led to environmental destruction,
loss of biodiversity, corruption of rule of law and increased emissions. Congolese
and Amazon forests face similar challenges today. As BiCRS processes scale, carefulattention to risks related to eco-colonialism will be essential.

January 2021

13

CHAPTER 4:
BIOMASS FEEDSTOCKSBiCRS feedstock since they represent an opportunity
cost and may in some cases provide a greater positive
climate impact.

Murasawa, Naoharu & Koseki, Hiroshi & Iwata, Yusaku & Sakamoto,Takabumi. (2018). Eval. the Fires and O2 Def. Risks Caused by Stored
Ag. Waste. Sustainability. 10. 1116. 10.3390/su10041116.

The sources of biomass that could be used for BiCRS arelargely the same as for conventional bioenergy systems.
Broadly, these sources fall into the following categories:■ Dedicated crops. Agricultural land can be used to■ Waste biomass: Many forms of biomass are

considered waste, meaning they have low to negative
costs of production and do not affect the availabilityof biomass for food and fiber applications. Thesebiomass sources include agricultural wastes (such as
crop residues, mill waste, grain hulls, etc.), forestry
wastes (thinnings and logging residues, as well as
standing dead biomass resulting from tree die-off
events1), black liquor from paper production andmunicipal solid wastes (MSW). As much as 3.3 Gtof agricultural wastes are produced each year, andtheir disposal poses a growing problem, particularly
because they are often left in the field to decompose,
releasing methane (a potent greenhouse gas), or
they are burned, producing particulates and otherair pollutants.2,3 Using waste biomass as the primarysource of feedstock for BiCRS is highly desirable
because of its low cost, low impact on food and fiber
production, and potential to help address these
problems. However, waste biomass could also be
used for other important purposes, including lowemissions construction materials2 and some formsof nutrient recovery4,5 and soil improvement.6 These
alternative uses must be considered when evaluating
the overall benefits from using waste biomass as aJanuary 2021

produce short-rotation crops dedicated to energy
uses (usually known as energy crops). These crops—
including sugar cane, corn, rapeseed, palm oil andsoya—are grown today in large quantities and are
in widespread use as biofuel feedstocks. Longerrotation woody biomass sources are also available,
including willow, eucalyptus, poplar and pine. Creating
plantations for these crops at the expense of existing
forests is generally counterproductive in terms ofcarbon emissions and other values. Similarly, expecting
these crops to grow on existing agricultural lands
is usually counterproductive since this can lead todisplacement of crops into unspoiled ecosystems andspikes in food costs. However, dedicated crops as BiCRS
feedstocks may have a role in the case of abandoned
or degraded land where their cultivation would notcompete with food and fiber production or displacenatural ecosystems. This is why estimates of thepotential biomass available as feedstock for BiCRS are
primarily constrained by agricultural land availability
for food and fiber production, although biomass
production on non-arable land may ease these
constraints. No substantial research has addressed thequestion of which crops maximize carbon removal in
the context of BiCRS, and conventional energy crops
may not actually be optimal as BiCRS feedstocks.

14

■ Forestry. The forestry industry spans the globe, withannual revenues of $270 billion derived from 2.4
billion hectares of productive forest land (about 60%of the world’s forests).7 The industry has grown 86%
since 2000; much of that growth is in roundwood,
sawnwood, wood panels and wood pellets (allrelevant to biomass conversion and removal).8 Total
volumes are roughly 5 billion cubic meters or about
2 gigatons oven-dry mass.9 In some nations, forests
represent both a large fraction of trade and revenues
and an important source of jobs for rural and poor
communities. Existing global forestry supply chains
could in principle be used to provide forest-derived
biomass as feedstock for BiCRS, although there are
significant risks related to sustainability and carbon
storage as noted in Chapter 3 above. Indeed, one of
the fastest-growing bioenergy pathways today is theuse of wood pellets combusted for power generationand heat, although the climate impacts of thispathway continue to be debated.10■ Microalgae. Biomass can be produced from various

strains of microalgae cultivated on land, in ponds
or in reactors, including Chlorella sorokiniana andNannochloropsis salina. These sources of biomass
are relatively expensive using current technology andrequire substantially more infrastructure; processing
steps (e.g., dewatering) are also very different fromconventional biomass processing. In addition, growing
these microalgae requires land area, although notnecessarily in highly productive locations. Thesebiomass sources offer an extremely efficient way toconvert sunlight into biomass, which is why they havebeen extensively researched.11-13■ Macroalgae. Biomass can be harvested frommacroalgae (seaweed) grown in the oceans orlakes. This is appealing because of the absenceof competitive pressures on land and freshwater
resources. However, technology to cultivate
macroalgae at large scales in the ocean is immature,

January 2021

15

and transporting and processing this biomass presents
challenges. Achieving economic feasibility will require
technology advancements and significant increase inscale, which carries some ecological risk.14-19
An important overall question in evaluating the potentialof BiCRS is the global amount of biomass feedstock that
could reasonably be made available for this use. Whileno such comprehensive estimates have been madefor BiCRS, a range of analogous estimates have been
made for biofuels and/or BECCS. These estimates areprimarily projections to a future date (usually 2050) andare constrained by avoiding or minimizing the pressure
put on global food and fiber supply through landcompetition. Therefore, these estimates rely on a setof assumptions about future global diet (both quantityand preferences around meat consumption), future crop
productivity gains and future land availability, among
others. Because of the inherent uncertainties in theseprojections, firm estimates are not possible, but it ispossible to describe the range of estimates and the setsof assumptions that influence them.

Quantification of Available Biomass on
the Basis of Capturable Carbon
Quantifying biomass on a common basis requires
choosing a form of measurement that can be applied
to different biomass types. Because most estimates ofglobal biomass availability have been developed in thecontext of bioenergy, they are expressed in terms of theenergy content of biomass (i.e., EJ). In what follows, weconvert these estimates into the total amount of carbon(or CO2) that could be captured and stored from thisbiomass.
Arriving at this value requires two steps: (1) estimating
the total amount of biomass feedstock that could bemade available for BiCRS (usually as fully de-watered“oven-dry tons” or odt) and (2) estimating the fractionof carbon in that biomass that could be captured andstored by a BiCRS process. While the former can beeasily determined from bioenergy studies (because 1
odt of biomass contains 18 GJ of energy on average20),
the latter is more complex. An important simplifying
assumption is that most biomass is approximately 50%
carbon by mass.20
The first major route for biomass use in BiCRS systems
is combustion to generate power and heat. The
combustion process results in 100% of the carbon in

January 2021

the combusted biomass being converted to CO2 in
dilute form in flue gas (which is also true for creationof hydrogen, the most efficient transport fuel use). This
CO2 can in principle be captured with high efficiency(over 90%) but the associated energy consumption
leads to emissions, as does harvesting, de-watering,transportation and other supply chain steps. Theseemissions must be subtracted from the gross amountof carbon captured from the combusted biomass toarrive at a net result. A conservative lower limit is that
50% of the original carbon in the combusted biomass
can be captured and stored on a net basis20 (based on
miscanthus grown in Brazil and burned for power in
Britain). Given the 50% carbon content of biomass, thisestimate implies 0.25 net tons of carbon (0.91 tCO2)
could be captured and removed per 1.0 odt of biomass
through the combustion route.
The second major route for biomass use in BiCRS
systems is through fermentation, gasification, pyrolysis
or related processes to produce liquid fuels and otherproducts. This route has two important differencesfrom the combustion route. The first is that a smaller
fraction of the carbon content of the biomass feedstock
is converted to CO2 because a significant portion of the
carbon winds up in the fuel or other products. (Thiscarbon is later converted to unabated CO2 emissions
when it is used as transportation fuel). However, theCO2 produced during the conversion is purer than theCO2 produced in the combustion process and therefore
requires less energy to capture. These factors, as well as
the emissions associated with harvesting, de-watering,transporting and other supply chain steps as noted
above, imply that approximately 25% of the original
carbon in the converted biomass can be captured andstored on a net basis.21 This estimate in turn implies that
0.125 net tons of carbon (0.45 tCO2) could be captured
and removed per odt of biomass through the liquid fuelroute.

Estimates of Future Global Biomass
Availability
Slade et al. summarize over 120 estimates of annual
global biomass availability made by a range of authors,grouping these estimates into categories and identifying
assumptions that lead to different results.22 Assumptions
consistent with biomass production having minimal
environmental impacts yield estimates of up 100 EJ ofenergy content, which corresponds to 5.5 Gt of biomass
16

(oven-dry) by 2050. In light of the analysis above
indicating that 0.45 to 0.91 tCO2 can be captured per 1
odt of biomass, we find a maximum of 2.5 to 5.0 GtCO2/y
could be captured and stored by 2050 using biomass
that can be produced with minimal environmental
impact.
This finding is based on several conservative
assumptions including that agricultural productivity
gains will be small, meat consumption will continue
to grow and food demand will stay high. Under theseassumptions, very little high-quality land will be available
for growth of energy crops, which will therefore be
restricted to marginal or degraded land. The studies
on which this finding is based generally identify a large
share of biomass feedstocks coming from agriculturalresidues, forest residues and other wastes (industrial,
municipal and manure). Forestry contributes little. The
finding aligns well with the US National Academy of
Sciences’ recent estimate of the potential global carbon
removal rate from BECCS (3.5 to 5.2 GtCO2/y).23
In light of the estimates summarized by Slade et al.22
and the US National Academies study, we find 2.5 to 5.0
GtCO2/y to be a reasonable estimate of the potential for
BiCRS.

We find the higher estimates for biomass availability
summarized by Slade et al.22 to be optimistic at best
because of their assumptions concerning land-use
change and high agricultural productivity gains. Without
substantial technology improvements in productivity
and/or biomass conversion, these amounts are highly
unlikely to be achieved. The extended range of estimatesof annual biomass availability summarized by Slade et al.
is 5.5 to 16.5 Gt (oven-dry) by 2050 (corresponding to
100 to 300 EJ of energy content). This implies a range of
2.5 to 15 GtCO2/y that could be captured and stored if all
this biomass were available for BiCRS.
These estimates assume that crop productivity gains will
match increased food demand from population growthand increased meat consumption. In these scenarios,
approximately 100 to 500 Mha of land is available forgrowing energy crops, which is mostly grassland or
degraded, marginal or deforested land (currently 4800
Mha of land globally is classified as agricultural24; see
Figure 4.1). The contribution from waste (industrial,
municipal and manure) is higher than the low-range
scenarios, and in some cases these scenarios envision
substantial reduction of global forest cover or intentional
replacement of mature forest with younger, fastergrowing forest.22

Forests

Shrublands, Grasslands, and Wetlands

Agriculture, Urban, and Barren

Figure 4.1. Global land surface cover by category. The red box covers approximately 500 Mha, the higher end of the area
envisioned for dedicated energy crop production in the extended biomass availability scenarios. Image: NASA GSFC andBoston University25.
January 2021

17

A limited number of extreme projections of annual
biomass availability estimate that more than 16.5
Gt (oven-dry) of biomass will be available by 2050
(corresponding to over 300 EJ of energy content,
which approaches current primary global energy
consumption). Because of the assumptions that underlie
these estimates, we deem them extremely unrealistic
and exclude them from further consideration.22 Theseassumptions include productivity gains outpacing
food demand and areas of 1000 Mha or larger (thesize of China) becoming available for energy crops.
Up to 10% of global land mass would be dedicated toenergy-related biomass production in these scenarios.
High-meat diets would be possible only with extensive
deforestation.
Several additional factors are important to consider
when attempting to understand these scenarios.
First, efforts to improve crop productivity often focus
on yields in just three crops (wheat, rice and maize),
which provide over 40% of global food calorie supply.26
Most scenarios assume a relatively inelastic global
food demand for these and other crops, which would
mean that productivity gains translate into agriculturalland freed from food production and thus usable forenergy crops. However, evidence supporting thesescenarios is scant, and crop intensification may simply
lead to greater food demand and little to no land
sparing (rebound effect).27,28 Additionally, intensifying
agricultural productivity may run into fundamental limitsof sustainability without major efforts to maintain soil
quality.29
Second, water constraints are poorly understood. Most
biomass availability scenarios assume energy crops
would be rain-fed rather than irrigated, but water
availability may still limit productivity. Important progresshas been made in improving water-use efficiency
without compromising yield in model transgenicorganisms,30 and a range of possible engineered
redesigns to plant systems to improve yield has been
proposed.31 However, a full understanding of this issue
at the system level is lacking, and the availability ofland to grow large amounts of energy crops may not
be sufficient for their actual production if these water
constraints prove to be severe. In a similar vein, theoptimal crops and related tradeoffs with intensificationand diversification for BiCRS may not necessarily be thesame as those for energy crops, an issue that deserves
further study.32
January 2021

Third, the emissions associated with biomass logistics(conversion and transport), as well as the specificchoice of route for BiCRS, remain poorly understood.
In a scenario under which biomass is transported
long distances by emissions-intensive means, the net
carbon available for capture and storage by either
the combustion or liquid-fuel route are about halfof the original potential of the biomass. Further, theemissions associated with compression, transport andinjection of captured CO2 may be larger than assumed
here, depending on the actual location of at-scalebiomass conversion facilities and CO2 pipelines. All
these considerations underscore the importance ofsystem-level analysis to accurately understand the net
emissions and potential for carbon removal from any
form of BiCRS.
1

Tubbesing, Carmen L., José Daniel Lara, John J. Battles, PeterW. Tittmann, and Daniel M. Kammen. “Characterizationof the Woody Biomass Feedstock Potential Resulting from
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2

Tripathi, Nimisha, Colin D. Hills, Raj S. Singh, and Christopher
J. Atkinson. “Biomass Waste Utilisation in Low-Carbon
Products: Harnessing a Major Potential Resource.” npj
Climate and Atmospheric Science 2, no. 1 (October 2019) at
p. 35 (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41612-019-00935).

3

Chawala, Pratika, and H. A. S. Sandhu. “Stubble Burn Area
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4

Vaish, Barkha, Vaibhav Srivastava, Prabhat Kumar Singh,
Pooja Singh, and Rajeev Pratap Singh. “Energy and Nutrient
Recovery from Agro-Wastes: Rethinking Their Potential
Possibilities.” Environmental Engineering Research 25,
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5

Chojnacka, Katarzyna, Konstantinos Moustakas, and Anna
Witek-Krowiak. “Bio-Based Fertilizers: A Practical Approach
Towards Circular Economy.” Bioresource Technology 295(January 2020) at p. 122223 (https://www.sciencedirect.
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6

De Corato, Ugo. “Agricultural Waste Recycling in Horticultural
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Plant Health: A Review under the Perspective of a Circular
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Brack, Duncan. “Background Analytical Study 4: Sustainable
Consumption and Production of Forest Products.” Global
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2018 (https://www.un.org/esa/forests/wp-content/
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Products in 2018.” Food and Agriculture Organization of
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timber/meetings/20160321/conversion-factorsquestionnaire-2016-03.pdf.

10 Brack, Duncan. The Impacts of the Demand for Woody

Biomass for Power and Heat on Climate and Forests.
Chatham House, the Royal Institute of International Affairs,
February 2017 (https://www.chathamhouse.org/sites/
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17 Konda, N. V. S. N. Murthy, Seema Singh, Blake A. Simmons,and Daniel Klein-Marcuschamer. “An Investigation on
the Economic Feasibility of Macroalgae as a Potential
Feedstock for Biorefineries.” BioEnergy Research 8, no. 3(September 2015) at p. 1046-56 (https://link.springer.com/
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18 Campbell, Iona, Adrian Macleod, Christian Sahlmann, Luiza

Neves, Jon Funderud, Margareth Øverland, Adam D. Hughes,
and Michele Stanley. “The Environmental Risks Associatedwith the Development of Seaweed Farming in Europe- Prioritizing Key Knowledge Gaps.” [In English]. Frontiersin Marine Science 6, no. 107 (March 2019) (https://www.
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19 Kim, Jang K., Charles Yarish, Eun Kyoung Hwang, Miseon

Park, and Youngdae Kim. “Seaweed Aquaculture: Cultivation
Technologies, Challenges and Its Ecosystem Services.” ALGAE
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20 Schlesinger, William H. and Emily S. Bernhardt.

Biogeochemistry: An Analysis of Global Change. 3rd ed.
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11 Didem Özçimen, Benan İnan, Anıl Tevfik Koçer andMeyrem Vehapi. “Bioeconomic Assessment of Microalgal
Production.” In Microalgal Biotechnology, edited by Leila
Queiroz Zepka and Maria Isabel Queiroz Eduardo JacobLopes, June 2018 (https://www.intechopen.com/books/
microalgal-biotechnology/bioeconomic-assessment-ofmicroalgal-production).

21 Mathilde Fajardy, Dr. Alexandre Köberle, Dr. Niall Mac

Dowell, Dr. Andrea Fantuzzi. “Beccs Deployment: A Reality
Check. “ Imperial College London, Grantham InstituteBriefing paper No 28, January 2019 (https://www.imperial.
ac.uk/media/imperial-college/grantham-institute/public/
publications/briefing-papers/BECCS-deployment---a-realitycheck.pdf).

12 Zhu, Yunhua, Susanne B. Jones, and Daniel B.

Anderson. “Algae Farm Cost Model: Considerations for
Photobioreactors.” US Departent of Energy, Office of
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22 Slade, Raphael, Ausilio Bauen, and Robert Gross. “Global

Bioenergy Resources.” Nature Climate Change 4, no. 2(February 2014) at p. 99-105 (https://www.nature.com/
articles/nclimate2097).

13 Acién Fernández, F. G., José María Fernández Sevilla,and Emilio Molina Grima. “Chapter 21 - Costs Analysis of
Microalgae Production.” In Biofuels from Algae (Second
Edition), edited by Ashok Pandey, Jo-Shu Chang, Carlos
Ricardo Soccol, Duu-Jong Lee and Yusuf Chisti at p. 551-66:
Elsevier, 2019 (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/
article/pii/B9780444641922000214).

14 Soleymani, Mohsen, and Kurt A. Rosentrater. “Techno-

Economic Analysis of Biofuel Production from Macroalgae(Seaweed).” [In eng]. Bioengineering (Basel, Switzerland) 4,
no. 4 (December 2017) at p. 92 (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.
gov/pmc/articles/PMC5746759/).

15 Ghadiryanfar, Mohsen, Kurt A. Rosentrater, Alireza Keyhani,

and Mahmoud Omid. “A Review of Macroalgae Production,with Potential Applications in Biofuels and Bioenergy.”
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article/abs/pii/S1364032115011016).

16 Bak, Urd Grandorf, Agnes Mols-Mortensen, and Olavur

Gregersen. “Production Method and Cost of CommercialScale Offshore Cultivation of Kelp in the Faroe Islands Using
Multiple Partial Harvesting.” Algal Research 33 (July 2018)at p. 36-47 (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/
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23 National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

Negative Emissions Technologies and Reliable Sequestration:
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24 World Bank Group, Data. “Agriicultural Land (Sq. Km.).”https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/AG.LND.AGRI.K2.

25“Nasa Visible Earth: A Catalog of Nasa Images andAnimations of Our Home Planet.” https://visibleearth.nasa.
gov/images/61004/new-land-cover-classification-maps.

26 Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations(FAO). “Save and Grow in Practice: Maize, Rice, Wheat a
Guide to Sustainable Cereal Production.” (2016) (http://
www.fao.org/ag/save-and-grow/MRW/en/1/index.html.)

27 Hertel, T. W., et al. “Global market integration increases

likelihood that a future African Green Revolution could
increase crop land use and CO2 emissions.” Proceedingsof the National Academy of Sciences 111(38) (September2014) at p. 13799-13804 (https://www.pnas.org/
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28 García, V. R., et al. “Agricultural intensification and land usechange: assessing country-level induced intensification, land
sparing and rebound effect.” Environmental Research Letters
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29 Kopittke, Peter M., Neal W. Menzies, Peng Wang, Brigid

A. McKenna, and Enzo Lombi. “Soil and the Intensificationof Agriculture for Global Food Security.” Environment
International 132 (November 2019) at p. 105078(https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/
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30 Głowacka, Katarzyna, Johannes Kromdijk, Katherine Kucera,

31 Ort, Donald R., Sabeeha S. Merchant, Jean Alric, AliceBarkan, Robert E. Blankenship, Ralph Bock, Roberta Croce,et al. “Redesigning Photosynthesis to Sustainably Meet
Global Food and Bioenergy Demand.” [In eng]. Proceedingsof the National Academy of Sciences of the United States ofAmerica 112, no. 28 (July 2015) at p. 8529-36 (https://www.
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32 Yang, Yi, David Tilman, Clarence Lehman, and Jared

J. Trost. “Sustainable Intensification of High-Diversity
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Jiayang Xie, Amanda P. Cavanagh, Lauriebeth Leonelli,Andrew D. B. Leakey, et al. “Photosystem Ii Subunit S
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CHAPTER 5:
TRANSPORT
Biomass can be transported by truck, rail or ship. The
products of biomass conversion (such as ethanol,hydrogen or captured CO2) can also be transported
by truck, rail or ship and, in some cases, by pipeline.
The optimal approach to transport logistics is highly
dependent on a variety of factors, including the locationsof biomass production, CO2 storage and product use; thetype, number and size of conversion facilities; and thecosts and availability of transport modes and pipelines.
This chapter will address general considerations for how
these factors influence the optimal approach to BiCRS
feedstock and product transportation.
In general, it is undesirable to transport biomass in
raw form for more than a short distance. Several
types of preprocessing can be used to improvetransportation efficiency and provide “conversion-ready”
feedstock from otherwise highly varied sources. These
preprocessing methods include drying, chipping, sorting,fractionating, sizing, leaching and densifying, which
can be done relatively close to the point of harvest/
collection.1 Preprocessed biomass can then be further
upgraded—such as with wood pellet manufacture—ordelivered directly to conversion facilities, resulting ina variety of products (see below), as well as captured
CO2. CO2 is best transported as a liquid, which can bein refrigerated form on trucks or rail cars (although thelatter is rare) at relatively low pressure (approximately–40 °C and 20 bar) or at ambient temperature inpipelines at high pressure (80 to 140 bar).

Transporting both biomass and CO2 by ship is possible,
although the latter is only practiced today in very small
volumes. Ship transport is of particular importance forlarge-scale BiCRS scenarios because many countries
lack sufficient land area to cultivate biomass at scale
and would likely look to import it, potentially over long
distances by sea.3 BiCRS does not generally envision
long-distance (>1000 km) transport of CO2 by ship sincelocal utilization and geological storage are preferable.
However, scenarios for 800-km CO2 ship transportation
have been developed with costs ranging from 19 to 36
euros/tonne.4

International Trade in Wood Pellets andBioethanol
Currently, international trade in biomass products
related to energy is dominated by wood pellets (forpower generation and heating) and bioethanol (as liquidtransportation fuels).
In 2018, more than 2 million tons of wood pellets wereshipped globally, a 21% increase over 2017. US exports
grew 50% year-over-year, with almost all going to theUK, Belgium and Denmark for use in power generation,
heating and related uses. While the EU remains thelargest global market for wood pellets,5 demand inJapan and South Korea doubled from 2016 to 2018,6
with Japanese demand primarily sourced from Canada
and Vietnam.7-9 Shipping costs between the ports
of Savannah, USA and Rotterdam, Netherlands are
estimated at 12 to 20 euros/ton.10 (See Figure 5.1.)

In the US, truck transport of biomass has an average
cost of $0.159/t-mile, while truck transport of liquid CO2
has an average cost of $0.175/t-mile. In both cases, theassociated fuel CO2 emissions value is 88 g/t-mile (2025projected value for the US). Rail transport of biomass
has an average cost of $0.071/t-mile; rail cost of CO2 isharder to estimate given its rarity but is approximately$0.071/t-CO2-mile with an additional cost of $2/t-CO2
for staging and interconnection equipment. CO2 pipeline
costs depend strongly on volume but are generally lower
than all other options for flow rates above 2000 tons/
day.2

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21

EXPORT: wood pellet

US

CanadaVietnam
LatviaRussiaEstonia
Austria
Malaysia

REST OF THE WORLD
0

5

10

15

20

25

IMPORT: wood pellet

UK

Denmark
Republic of Korea

Italy
Belgium
Japan

30

port
Ex

Rest of the
World

REST OF THE WORLD
0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

30%

port
Im
Rest of the
World

15%

Figure 5.1. Global exports and imports of wood pellets in 2018 by market share percentage. The total volume of woodpellet global trade was approximately 20 million tonnes. Source: FAO Forestry database11; Chart: LLNL.

Transportation of wood pellets involves several logisticalcomplications that are not present for other bulk
cargoes. Pellets must be protected from moisture andkept temperature-controlled due to their ability to
self-heat and ignite.12 Pellets also degrade and releasecarbon monoxide during transit, which can pose a hazard
to crew.13 Many import terminals are not currently
capable of providing this handling above a limited scale
and will require upgrades to handle expected growthin volume.14 These issues are complicated by efforts toincrease the loading of ships transporting wood pellets;
Panamax-class vessels are used to carry over 60,000 tonsof wood pellets at a time.15
Global production and export of bioethanol is dominatedby the US and Brazil. From 2017 to 2019, US annual
exports averaged 5.9 billion liters and Brazilian annual
exports totaled 1.7 billion liters, representing 70% of
all exports (see Figure 5.2).16 Import restrictions, somebased on assessments of the emissions associatedwith bioethanol production, have somewhat limited
this trade.17 While bioethanol requires special handlingas a flammable liquid, it is similar to conventionalhydrocarbon shipment and thus more compatible withexisting logistics infrastructure. Shipping costs vary bymajor route; for the east-bound trans-Atlantic routefrom the US, they are $50 to $88/tonne; for the US Gulf
Coast to Asia route, they are $60 to $98/ton; and for
the US Gulf Coast to Brazil route, they are $75 to $85/
tonne.18,19
January 2021

Given these factors, a significant expansion ofinternational biomass shipment for the purpose of BiCRS
would involve several features/challenges:■ Biomass must be processed before long-distancetransportation to improve economics and to
standardize cargo for logistics and handling. The
current standard formats are solid wood pellets andliquid bioethanol, and significant investment has
been made in infrastructure to handle these formats.
Approaches to BiCRS that rely on large-scale biomass
shipment may therefore seek to use biomass in theseformats. If other formats prove to be preferable,
this could involve increased infrastructure costs. An
important exception may be pyrolysis oil (also known
as bio-oil, see Box 7-1), given its compatibility withpetroleum transportation infrastructure.
■ In the case of wood pellets and bioethanol, global
trade is dominated by a small number of producers/
exporters and a slightly larger number of consumers/
importers. This means a relatively small number ofports are involved, with a limited set of shipping
routes representing the majority of trade volume. At
the scales anticipated in the future, biomass trade for
BiCRS may significantly increase the ports and routes
involved, requiring corresponding infrastructure
investments.

22

EXPORT: ethanol

US

BrazilEU
Pakistan
UK
South Africa
Peru
RussiaIndia
China
REST OF THE WORLD
0

10

20

30

IMPORT: ethanol

40

50

60

BrazilJapan
Canada

US
EU
UK
India
Philippines
Korea
China
REST OF THE WORLD
0

5

10

15

port
Ex

Rest of the
World

20

25

8.3%

port
Im
Rest of the
World

19.2%

Figure 5.2. Global exports and imports of ethanol (average value 2017 to 2019) by market share percentage. The total
volume of ethanol global trade is approximately 17 billion liters (equivalent to 13.4 million tonnes). Source: OECD, Table
C.40.2.20 Chart: LLNL.

Alternatives to Biomass Shipment
The current structure of global trade in bioenergy
is based on moving processed biomass to a final
conversion facility near the location where energy
services will be consumed. For wood pellets, this facility
is usually a power plant or district heating system.
For biofuels, the facility is usually fuel distribution
infrastructure near vehicles.
BiCRS could operate differently: conversion facilities
could be located near the source of biomass feedstock,with very little biomass traded globally. The CO2 captured
during conversion could be stored undergroundnear the conversion facility, with the carbon removal
benefits sold to global buyers based on widely agreed
upon accounting and sustainability standards. Theenergy services or products resulting from the biomass
conversion could be used locally or sold in global
markets.
Such a logistics paradigm would emphasize the creationof jobs and economic value near the biomass source,
rather than treating the biomass as a commodity export.
This could create significant economic opportunities forcommunities near sources of biomass. (Today biomass
feedstock for wood pellets is valued at approximately 30$/ton, while finished wood pellets sell for approximately
170 $/ton.10 ) Such a logistics paradigm could also help
January 2021

insulate communities and biomass-exporting nations
from commodity price volatility, which has a numberof negative impacts, including large budget deficits
when commodity prices fall and large exchange rate
fluctuations due to capital movement. (Today about
two-thirds of developing countries are commoditydependent, meaning that at least 60% of their export
earnings are from commodities.) BiCRS conversion
facilities located near biomass feedstock production
regions could contribute to economic development andprotect local economies from commodity price swings.21
One strategy for achieving this vision would be toconvert biomass to hydrogen or ammonia at facilities
located near both the biomass feedstock source andCO2 storage sites. The resulting hydrogen or ammonia
could be used domestically or sold on global markets.
Today, this scenario is strongly constrained by the lack of
viable, low-cost shipping of hydrogen. (The first liquifiedhydrogen container ship was launched by Kawasaki in2019.22) Shipment of liquified ammonia has a longer
history, including attention in Southeast Asia,23 and may
serve as an alternative approach.24 Although the scale of
the global shipping fleet is still relatively small,25 many
existing vessels could be retrofitted for ammonia fuelor simply for transportation and regasification.26 If longdistance transport of hydrogen or ammonia becomes
economically viable, it could enable local biomass
23

conversion and CO2 storage, with significant economic
benefits for biomass-producing regions.

biomass feedstocks before enacting significant policy
support.

Lessons from palm oil

A second lesson relates to the challenges of establishingcredible, effective sustainability certifications forbiomass cultivation at scale. Despite the fact that theEuropean Commission called for biofuel certification
schemes to prevent deforestation over a decade ago,32
these schemes have had limited effectiveness. The mostnotable scheme for palm oil production, the Roundtableon Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) cofounded by the World
Wildlife Fund, has faced numerous criticisms including aslow pace of adoption, poor applicability to smallholder
producers and evidence of ongoing biodiversity
destruction by certified plantations.33,34 In scaling up
BiCRS, it will be important for policy support to include
a valid, robust certification system from the beginning,which may need to receive ongoing public funding orother systematic support to ensure its effectiveness.

Palm oil and palm kernel oil are highly valued edibleoils extracted from the flesh and seed of the oil palm
tree. They form an important part of global trade inprocessed biomass; the oils are primarily used in thefood and beverage sector, but approximately 10% isused in biofuel production.27 Approximately threequarters of global production is exported, with imports
reaching nearly 47 million tons in 2017.28 Production isdominated by Indonesia and Malaysia, which accounted
for 85-90% of global production in 2016.27
The growth of the global palm oil market offers several
cautionary lessons for BiCRS. First, policy-driven biofuel
subsidies in the European Union were among thefactors that helped lead to the rapid growth of palm
oil production.29 This growth has been accompanied
by widespread deforestation as land was cleared forplantations: between 2001 and 2015, oil palm replaced
10.5 million hectares of forest globally,30 and over 50% of
all deforestation on the island of Borneo between 2005
and 2015 was associated with palm oil production.27
The European Commission recently recognized thisdeforestation impact and excluded palm-oil-based
biodiesel from eligibility for meeting renewabletransportation goals, envisioning a full phase-out ofpalm oil biodiesel by 2030.31 This belated realization of
the full environmental damage associated with palm
oil production suggests that a better understanding of
the full life-cycle impacts should have been developed
before the original policy frameworks were put inplace. In scaling up BiCRS, it will be important to fully
understand the life-cycle environmental impacts ofJanuary 2021

Finally, despite the European Union’s decision to restrict
and eventually phase-out palm oil biodiesel, bothIndonesia and Malaysia challenged this decision at theWorld Trade Organization, with cases still ongoing.35 Thisaction by these countries is motivated by the large rolethat palm oil plays in export revenues.36 This situation
highlights the fact that enacting subsidies for producing
biomass for climate-related purposes can stimulate
the growth of a large cultivation industry by exporting
countries, which may later be difficult to slow or stop, avariation of the “eco-colonialism” concern (see Box 3.1).
In scaling up BiCRS, it will be important to consider
whether policy support is creating global value chainsfor biomass production that ultimately overwhelm
sustainability considerations in favor of economic
ones.

24

1

2

Hess, J. Richard, Allison E. Ray, and Timothy G. Rials.
“Editorial: Advancements in Biomass Feedstock
Preprocessing: Conversion Ready Feedstocks.” [In English].
Frontiers in Energy Research 7, no. 140 (December2019) (https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/
fenrg.2019.00140/full).
Sarah E. Baker, Joshuah K. Stolaroff, George Peridas, Simon
H. Pang, Hannah M. Goldstein, Felicia R. Lucci, Wenqin Li,
Eric W. Slessarev, Jennifer Pett-Ridge, Frederick J. Ryerson,
Jeff L. Wagoner, Whitney Kirkendall, Roger D. Aines, Daniel L.
Sanchez, Bodie Cabiyo, Joffre Baker, Sean McCoy, Sam Uden,
Ron Runnebaum, Jennifer Wilcox, Peter C. Psarras, Hélène
Pilorgé, Noah McQueen, Daniel Maynard, Colin McCormick.
“Getting to Neutral: Options for Negative Carbon Emissions
in California.” Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory,
LLNL-TR-796100 (January, 2020) (https://www-gs.llnl.gov/
content/assets/docs/energy/Getting_to_Neutral.pdf).

3

Zhang, Di, Mai Bui, Mathilde Fajardy, Piera Patrizio, Florian
Kraxner, and Niall Mac Dowell. “Unlocking the Potential of
Beccs with Indigenous Sources of Biomass at a National
Scale.” Sustainable Energy & Fuels 4, no. 1 (September 2020)
at p. 226-53. (https://doi.org/10.1039/C9SE00609E)

4

Neele, Filip, Robert de Kler, Michiel Nienoord, Peter
Brownsort, Joris Koornneef, Stefan Belfroid, Lies Peters,
Andries van Wijhe, and Daniel Loeve. “CO2 Transport by
Ship: The Way Forward in Europe.” Energy Procedia 114(July 2017) at p. 6824-34 (https://www.sciencedirect.com/
science/article/pii/S1876610217320155).

5

6

7

Flach, Bob, Sabine Lieberz, Sophie Bolla. “Eu Biofuels
Annual 2019.” USDA Foreign Agricultural Service(Global Agricultural Information Network), July 2019(https://apps.fas.usda.gov/newgainapi/api/report/
downloadreportbyfilename?filename=Biofuels%20
Annual_The%20Hague_EU-28_7-15-2019.pdf).
Wood Resources International, LLC. “Over 22 Million Tons ofWood Pellets Were Shipped Globally in 2018.” International
Forest Industries, https://internationalforestindustries.
com/2019/04/30/22-million-tons-wood-pellets-shippedglobally-2018/.
Parton, Stan. “Japanese Demand for Wood Pellets Largely
Fulfilled by North American Producers (Blog).” Forest 2
Market (F2M), (March 2019) https://www.forest2market.
com/blog/japanese-demand-for-wood-pellets-largelyfulfilled-by-north-american-producers.

8

Voegele, Erin. “Pinnacle Charters Ship to Transport Wood
Pellets to Japan.” Biomass Magazine, (January 2020) http://
biomassmagazine.com/articles/16764/pinnacle-chartersship-to-transport-wood-pellets-to-japan.

9

Bossler, Annette. “Sailing into Japan: Wood Pellet Demandin a Changing Energy Market.” Biomass Magazine, (January2020) http://biomassmagazine.com/articles/16733/
sailing-into-japan-wood-pellet-demand-in-a-changingenergy-market.

10 Visser, L., R. Hoefnagels, and M. Junginger. “Wood Pellet

Supply Chain Costs – a Review and Cost Optimization
Analysis.” Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews 118(February 2020) at p. 109506 (https://www.sciencedirect.
com/science/article/pii/S1364032119307142).

11 Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations(FAO). “Forest Product Statistics (2018).” http://www.fao.
org/forestry/statistics/80938@180724/en/.

12 Lönnermark, Anders (RISE Research Institutes of Sweden(Safety and Transport Research)). “Safe Handling andStorage of Pellets – Self-Heating, Fires and Explosions.” In
Nordic Pellets 2019. Bioenergy International, February 2019(https://bioenergyinternational.com/app/uploads/2019/02/
Lonnermark_Anders_NPC2019.pdf).

13 Hedlund, Frank Huess, and Øssur Jarleivson Hilduberg.

“Fatal Accidents During Marine Transport of Wood
Pellets Due to Off-Gassing: Experiences from Denmark.”
In Biomass Volume Estimation and Valorization for
Energy, edited by Jaya Shankar Tumuluru, February
2017 (https://www.intechopen.com/books/biomassvolume-estimation-and-valorization-for-energy/
fatal-accidents-during-marine-transport-of-wood-pelletsdue-to-off-gassing-experiences-from-denmark).

14 Dafnomilis, I., G. Lodewijks, M. Junginger, and D. L. Schott.

“Evaluation of Wood Pellet Handling in Import Terminals.”
Biomass and Bioenergy 117 (October 2018) at p. 10-23(https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/
S0961953418301697).

15 “Pinnacle Breaks Wood Pellet Shipping World

Record.” Canadian Biomass, July 2020 (https://www.
canadianbiomassmagazine.ca/pinnacle-breaks-wood-pelletshipping-world-record/).

16 OECD, Food, and Agriculture Organization of the United

Nations. Ethanol Projections: Share in Volume Terms andTrade. 2020. (doi:https://doi.org/10.1787/7344bf11-en).

17 James Burgess (Editor). “EU Repeal of US Ethanol

Antidumping Levy Raises Environmental Questions.” (May2019) https://blogs.platts.com/2019/05/23/eu-us-ethanolimports-environmental/.

18 Kelley, Lane. “Chem Freights Rise on Methanol, Ethanol

Surge.” (April 2016) https://www.icis.com/explore/
resources/news/2016/04/15/9988586/chem-freights-riseon-methanol-ethanol-surge/.

19 Urbanchuk, John M. “The Economic Competitiveness of U.S.

Ethanol (Prepared for the Renewable Fuels Association).”
ABF Economics: Agriculture and BioFuels Cunsulting, LLP, July
2014 (https://ethanolrfa.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/
Economic_Competitiviness_Study1.pdf).

20 OECD, Food, and Agriculture Organization of the United

Nations. Ethanol Projections: Share in Volume Terms andTrade (2020). (https://doi.org/10.1787/7344bf11-en.

21 Trade and Development Board, Trade and Development

Commission. “Promoting Value Addition and theJanuary 2021

25

Enhancement of Domestic Productive Capacity through Local
Economic Empowerment.” Paper presented at the United
Nations Conference on Trade and Development (Expert
Meeting on Promoting Value Addition and Enhancementof Domestic Productive Capacity through Local Economic
Empowerment), Geneva, October 2019 (https://unctad.org/
meetings/en/SessionalDocuments/ciem10d2_en.pdf).
22 Kawasaki Heavy Industries, Ltd. “World's First Liquefied

Hydrogen Carrier Suiso Frontier Launches Building an
International Hydrogen Energy Supply Chain Aimed
at Carbon-Free Society.” (December 2019) https://global.kawasaki.com/en/corp/newsroom/news/
detail/?f=20191211_3487.

23 Jones Day: Insights. “Singapore Encourages Investment

toward Decarbonizing Shipping.” (July 2020) https://www.
jonesday.com/en/insights/2020/07/singapore-encouragesinvestment-toward-decarbonizing-shipping.

24 The Royal Society. “Ammonia: Zero-Carbon Fertiliser, Fueland Energy Store (Policy Briefing).” February 2020 (https://royalsociety.org/-/media/policy/projects/green-ammonia/
green-ammonia-policy-briefing.pdf).

25 Marsh, Peter. “New Liquefied Ammonia Atb Tank Barge.”

Pacific Maritime Magazine, (November 2017) https://www.
pacmar.com/story/2017/11/01/features/new-liquefiedammonia-atb-tank-barge/557.html.

26 Clean Air Task Force and Columbia SIPA: Center on

Global Energy Policy. “Zero-Carbon Fuels for Marine
Shipping.” May 2020 (https://www.catf.us/wp-content/
uploads/2020/06/2020_SIPA_Zero-Carbon-Shipping.pdf).

27 Noguera, Jose, and Rowena A. Pecchecnino. “Opec and theInternational Oil Market: Can a Cartel Fuel the Engine of
Economic Development?”. International Journal of Industrial
Organization 25, no. 1 (February 2007) at p. 187-99 (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijindorg.2006.04.010).

28 International Council on Clean Transportation, prepared by

Stephanie Searle (January 2019). “Briefing: International
policy and market drivers of Indonesian palm oil demand.”(https://theicct.org/sites/default/files/publications/
Palm_Oil_Briefing_20190130_20190130.pdf).

29 International Institute for Sustainable Development. “EUbiofuel subsidies driving unsustainable palm oil production,
IISD report shows.” (September 2013), https://www.iisd.org/
articles/eu-biofuel-subsidies-driving-unsustainable-palm-oilproduction-iisd-report-shows.

30 Elizabeth Dow Goldman, M. W., Nancy Harris andMartina Schneider. “Commodities in Agriculture-Linked
Deforestation: Oil Palm, Soy, Cattle, Wood Fiber, Cocoa,
Coffee, and Rubber.” (November 2020), https://www.
wri.org/publication/estimating-role-seven-commoditiesagriculture-linked-deforestation.

31 Blenkinsop, P. “EU targets palm oil for road fuel phase-out,

but with exemptions.” (February 2019), https://www.reuters.
com/article/us-eu-biofuels/eu-targets-palm-oil-for-road-fuelphase-out-but-with-exemptions-idUSKCN1Q021Q.

32 Kinver, M. “EU biofuels ‘need to be certified forsustainability’.” (June 2010), https://www.bbc.com/
news/10283258.

33 Rodthong, W., et al. “Factors Influencing the Intensityof Adoption of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm
Oil Practices by Smallholder Farmers in Thailand.”Environmental Management 66(3) (July 2020) at p. 377-394(https://doi.org/10.1007/s00267-020-01323-3).

34 Cazzolla Gatti, R. and A. Velichevskaya (2020). “Certified“sustainable” palm oil took the place of endangered Bornean
and Sumatran large mammals habitat and tropical forestsin the last 30 years.” Science of The Total Environment 742(November 2020) at p. 140712 (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.
scitotenv.2020.140712).

28 Khusanjanova, Jamola. “Opec’s Benefit for the Member

35 World Trade Organization. “Panels established to review

27 Vivek Voora, C. L., Steffany Bermudez, and Sofia Baliño.

36 Rifin, A., et al. (2020). “Assessing the impact of limiting

Countries.” Research in World Economy 2 (April 2011) at p.
14-23 (http://www.sciedu.ca/journal/index.php/rwe/article/
view/120).
“Global Market Report: Palm Oil.” (https://www.iisd.org/
system/files/publications/ssi-global-market-report-palm-oil.
pdf).

January 2021

Indian tech tariffs, Japanese export restrictions, EU palm
oil measures.” (July 2020), https://www.wto.org/english/
news_e/news20_e/dsb_29jul20_e.htm.
Indonesian palm oil exports to the European Union.” Journalof Economic Structures 9(1) (April 2020) at p. 26 (https://doi.
org/10.1186/s40008-020-00202-8).

26

CHAPTER 6:
CONVERSIONPROCESSES
The term bioenergy denotes the conversion of biomass
into energy or energy carriers, including electricity, heatand fuels. Traditional biomass use—the combustionof wood or dung for cooking and heating—has beenubiquitous in human history. The last several decades
have seen large-scale production of ethanol andbiodiesel fuels from food crops, particularly in the US(primarily from maize and soy) and Brazil (sugar cane).
However, most decarbonization plans now envision
wide scale-up of production of liquid transportation
fuels and other modern energy products from nonconsumable cellulosic biomass feedstocks, also known
as lignocellulosic feedstocks.1 To the extent that energy
extraction involves oxidation of part or all of the biomass
carbon to CO2, process modifications are necessary
to ensure that bioenergy systems permanently store
carbon.
A wide range of technologies for converting biomass toenergy, products and services have been developed or
proposed. Biomass conversion is generally divided into
biochemical or thermochemical pathways. Biochemical
pathways rely on living microorganisms, often yeast or
bacteria, to process biomass into more useful forms.
Much research and engineering has focused on thebiochemical conversion of cellulose to fuels, andmost of the pioneering commercial-scale cellulosic
biofuel production facilities built to date are based on
fermentation.2 In contrast, thermochemical conversion
involves controlled heating and decomposition of
biomass into liquid, gaseous and solid byproducts
and subsequent upgrading of liquid and gaseousintermediates into finished liquid fuels. The optimal
conversion technology in any situation depends in part
upon the type of feedstock.
While technical and policy barriers have prevented widespread production of cellulosic biofuels, fermentation
remains a key technology, both in current biofuel
production and in production of carbon-negative fuels.
For instance, using existing first-generation corn ethanol
facilities with CCS, fermentation produces a pure stream
January 2021

of CO2 available for carbon sequestration or utilization.3
CCS can similarly be applied to cellulosic biomass
fermentation to produce carbon-negative fuels at larger
scales and potentially with a reduced environmental
footprint.
Ethanol is produced through fermentation of various
grains (e.g., corn, sorghum, barley and wheat) and sugar
crops (e.g., sugar cane, sugar beets and sweet sorghum)with CO2 as a byproduct. Fuel ethanol, like alcoholbased beverages, is produced from the fermentationof six-carbon sugars (e.g., glucose) by yeast. During
fermentation, glucose decomposes into ethanol and CO2
through the following chemical reaction:

C6 H12 O6 → 2C2 H5 OH + 2CO2
In corn ethanol production, each bushel of corn yields
approximately 2.7 gallons of ethanol, 17 pounds of dried
distiller grains with solubles (DDGS) and 18 pounds ofCO2.4 Thus, production of 1 gallon of ethanol generates
6.29 pounds of CO2.5 Lignin, one of the componentsof cellulosic biomass, is recalcitrant to processing by
microbes or enzymes. As a result, high-lignin feedstocks,
such as softwood biomass, are less amenable tobiological conversion6 or require pretreatment.
In contrast, thermochemical conversion involves
decomposition of biomass into liquid, gaseous andsolid components, and it often upgrades liquid andgaseous intermediates into finished liquid transportation
fuels.7 While thermochemical conversion technologies,
including gasification and pyrolysis, have not yetachieved the same degree of commercial deployment
as biochemical technologies, they are highly amenable
to carbon-negative configurations, and thus areprime candidates for additional targeted research anddeployment support. Optimal, modern gasification
is an autothermal process where biomass is partiallycombusted in an oxygen-restricted environment,
producing a hydrogen- and carbon monoxide–richsynthesis gas (syngas) product. Syngas can then beburned to produce electricity or catalytically upgradedto liquid fuels. Pyrolysis involves controlled heatingof biomass in an oxygen-limited or oxygen-freeenvironment under low enough temperatures and shortenough times that kinetics still control the outcome.
The temperature and ramp rate can be adjusted to favor
liquid or solid products. Fast pyrolysis is optimized forthe former, producing a range of liquid fractions (bio-oil
27prime among them). Slow pyrolysis optimizes productionof a solid carbon-rich fraction called biochar.
Biomass typically contains a higher ratio of oxygen tocarbon than fossil fuels such as coal. As a result, biofuel
production typically requires the addition of hydrogen or
inefficient conversion of carbon in biomass to biofuels.
Understanding carbon conversion efficiency is key tounderstanding the life-cycle impacts of biofuels derived
from both biochemical and thermochemical pathways.
Thermochemical processes also impart additional
feedstock flexibility, including the ability to work withhigh-lignin softwood species or municipal solid waste.8
Thermal or biochemical conversion both yield the
product of interest, other byproducts and a significant
amount of CO2 from the conversion process itself.
The ratio of these three products varies widely, fromcombustion for electric power, which turns most of
the carbon into CO2 with a small amount of char, toautothermal fast pyrolysis, which turns about half the
carbon into CO2, 20% into char, and the remaining 30%
into bio-oil (the product of interest).

Today the overwhelming majority of lignocellulosic
biomass is used to create electricity or heat, with anincreasing amount used to make methane by anaerobic
digestion. In all cases, the conversion process yields CO2
directly. In fuels production, between 25% and 50% of
the incoming carbon in all the processes in Figure 6.1
typically turns into CO2 at the processing facility, often
at high purity (see Chapter 4). The relatively low costof CO2 capture from these high-purity streams makes
them logical targets for BiCRS processes to capture
and permanently store carbon and also makes thempromising first markets.
CONVERSIONTECHNOLOGYPRODUCT SCENARIOS– Forest management– Sawmill residue– Shrub & chaparral

Gasification

Agricultural Residue

Combustion

Municipal Solid Waste

Fast
Pyrolysis– Low moisture– High moisture– Dry waste– Green waste– Food waste

Gaseous Waste– Dairy manure– Wastewater– Landfill gas



Liq











Hydrothermalliquefaction
Biogasutilizationct
uid ricity
Bio fuel
ch s
a
RN r
G
w
Re ith c
ne ap
wa tur
ble e
Na
t’l
G

ele

id

Gr

Forest Biomass

Hy

dro

ge

n

as

FEEDSTOCK

Figure 6-1 shows the most common conversion
processes, biomass sources and range of products madefrom them. In each case, carbon storage is achieved
alongside production of an energy product. These
products vary widely in their envisioned end-uses,
including electricity, gaseous fuels or liquid fuels. On an
energy basis, liquid fuels are often the most valuable,
while electricity is least valuable. Carbon-negativehydrogen, on the other hand, has numerous applications
in transportation, electricity production, fuels production
and other industrial processes.















Figure 6.1. Common biomass feedstocks, conversion technologies and products (Source: Baker et al. 2020, Getting to
Neutral 9)

January 2021

28

1

Fulton, Lewis M., Lee R. Lynd, Alexander Körner, Nathanael
Greene, and Luke R. Tonachel. “The Need for Biofuels as
Part of a Low Carbon Energy Future.” Biofuels, Bioproducts
and Biorefining 9, no. 5 (June 2015) at p. 476-83 (https://
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/bbb.1559).

2

Lynd, Lee R., Xiaoyu Liang, Mary J. Biddy, Andrew Allee, Hao
Cai, Thomas Foust, Michael E. Himmel, et al. “Cellulosic
Ethanol: Status and Innovation.” Current Opinion in
Biotechnology 45 (June 2017) at p. 202-11 (https://doi.
org/10.1016/j.copbio.2017.03.008).

3

Sanchez, Daniel L., Nils Johnson, Sean T. McCoy, Peter A.
Turner, and Katharine J. Mach. “Near-Term Deployment of
Carbon Capture and Sequestration from Biorefineries in
the United States.” Proceedings of the National Academy of
Sciences 115, no. 19 (May 2018) at p. 4875-80 (https://doi.
org/10.1073/pnas.1719695115).

4

Rosentrater, Kurt, and Kasi Muthukumarappan. “Corn
Ethanol Coproducts: Generation, Properties, and Future
Prospects.” International Sugar Journal 108 (November2006) at p. 648-57 (https://www.researchgate.net/
publication/279895591_Corn_ethanol_coproducts_
Generation_properties_and_future_prospects).

5

Xu, Yixiang, Loren Isom, and Milford A. Hanna. “Adding
Value to Carbon Dioxide from Ethanol Fermentations.”
Bioresource Technology 101, no. 10 (October 2010) at p.
3311-19 (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/
S0960852410000465).

January 2021

6

Zhu, J. Y., and X. J. Pan. “Woody Biomass Pretreatment
for Cellulosic Ethanol Production: Technology and Energy
Consumption Evaluation.” Bioresource Technology 101, no.
13 (July 2010) at p. 4992-5002 (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.
biortech.2009.11.007).

7

Tanger, Paul, John Field, Courtney Jahn, Morgan DeFoort,and Jan Leach. “Biomass for Thermochemical Conversion:
Targets and Challenges.” [In English]. Frontiers in Plant
Science 4, no. 218 (July 2013) (https://www.frontiersin.org/
articles/10.3389/fpls.2013.00218/full).

8

Daniel L. Sanchez, John L. Field, Johannes Lehmann,Jane Zelikova, Matt Lucas, Jason Funk ,Roger Aines,
Jennifer Pett-Ridge. “Hybrid Biological and Engineered
Solutions.” Chap. 5 In Building a New Carbon Economy: An
Innovation Plan, edited by Carbon180 (formerly Center for
Carbon Removal): Carbon180: the New Carbon Economy
Consortium (2019) (https://static1.squarespace.com/
static/5b9362d89d5abb8c51d474f8/t/5b98383aaa4a99890
9c4b606/1536702527136/ccr02.innovationplan.FNL.pdf).

9Sarah E. Baker, Joshuah K. Stolaroff, George Peridas, Simon
H. Pang, Hannah M. Goldstein, Felicia R. Lucci, Wenqin Li,
Eric W. Slessarev, Jennifer Pett-Ridge, Frederick J. Ryerson,
Jeff L. Wagoner, Whitney Kirkendall, Roger D. Aines, Daniel L.
Sanchez, Bodie Cabiyo, Joffre Baker, Sean McCoy, Sam Uden,
Ron Runnebaum, Jennifer Wilcox, Peter C. Psarras, Hélène
Pilorgé, Noah McQueen, Daniel Maynard, Colin McCormick.
“Getting to Neutral: Options for Negative Carbon Emissions
in California.” Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory,
LLNL-TR-796100 (January, 2020, ) (https://www-gs.llnl.gov/
content/assets/docs/energy/Getting_to_Neutral.pdf).

29

CHAPTER 7:
CARBON SEPARATION
AND STORAGE
To achieve true net-zero emissions, carbon removed
from below the Earth’s surface must be balanced byreturning carbon below the Earth’s surface or storage ofthat carbon in long-lived products.1,2 Carbon removed
from the Earth’s subsurface (the geosphere) throughcombustion of fossil fuels or other processes must be
returned to the geosphere or long-lived products tobalance the carbon and climate books.
A number of carbon removal methods rely on storing
CO2 in plants (the biosphere). Although storage of CO2
in plants can be cheap and produce ecosystem benefits,
the duration of such storage is short, the risk of releaseis high and the potential is limited.
■ First, the likely duration of most carbon storage inplants is measured in years or decades, delaying but
not preventing climate risks.
■ Second, carbon storage in plants can have a high riskof accidental release. (The enormous forest fires in
California during 2020 are estimated to have released
the equivalent of 90 million tons of CO2 through midSeptember, illustrating the fragility of carbon storage
in plants.3) Many studies indicate that the risk ofaccidental release increases with climate change (e.g.,Anderegg et al., 20204), in part driven by drought, hightemperatures, decreases in soil moisture, fires, biotic
agents and other climate-related forcings.
■ Third, plants have limited potential to offset
anthropogenic carbon emissions. The disequilibria
created by these emissions in recent decades arehuge, without any historical precedent. Since 75-80%of these releases are outside the domain of land-use
and biological system management,5 biomass-based
systems are unlikely to be able to store large enoughvolumes of atmospheric carbon in relevant timeframes.
The technologies and tools of carbon management
geological CO2 storage are well known and understood.6-8
The total capacity of the Earth’s crust to store CO2 iseffectively limitless.8-10 Conventional geological storage

January 2021

systems like saline formations have an estimated storage
volume of 10-20 trillion tons—far more than either
annual emissions or total historic emissions. Harnessing
this capacity in tandem with biomass conversion
makes BiCRS a unique and important approach to
deep decarbonization by 2050, helping balance any
residual emissions in hard-to-abate sectors. This chapter
examines how, in the context of BiCRS, CO2 can be stored
underground or in long-lived products.

Dedicated CO2 Storage Geography
One of the most promising aspects of BiCRS is thepotential for co-location of large biomass supplies
and geological storage resources, particularly where
they naturally occur in close proximity to each other.
Producers and operators have an option to convert BiCRS
feedstocks locally, allowing them to store CO2 locallyand ship decarbonized products as described in Chapter
5. This option creates several benefits, including local
jobs, greater local economic and tax benefits, and lower
mass for shipping (most obvious if producing hydrogen
locally). Because of the prohibitive cost of long-distanceCO2 shipping, this approach requires local CO2 storage
capacity (Figure 7.1).
Several important geographies have both high biomass
potential and high CO2 storage potential.
■ Southeast and Central US: The softwood timber forestsof the southern states are well known for pulp andpaper production and for supplying wood pellets. The
corn-belt of the Midwest is well known for producing
grain, corn and ethanol. The extraordinary geologicalstorage potential of these areas is less well known. Yet
the Gulf of Mexico and Illinois Basin together provide
a storage capacity of close to 1 trillion tons of CO2.12
Already, the world’s first BECCS project in Decatur,
Illinois shows the promise of BiCRS in the region. The
region also hosts one of the world’s most impressive
shipping and logistics infrastructures, including
Mississippi river barge traffic and the industrial portsof Houston, Port Arthur, New Orleans and Mobile.
■ Southeast Asia: The forests of southeast Asia hostsome of the world’s largest palm-oil plantations,hardwood timber supplies, bamboo forests and rice
plantations. Very large and productive sedimentarybasins underlie these regions, including Sumatra,
Borneo and Malaysia. Southeast Asia also straddles
the world’s most trafficked marine transport systems

30

Thickness (m)CO2 assessments at country or
regional level
Potential sequestration basins
Prospective areas
Non-prospective areas
Countries not studied+

USGS CO2StoP

Consoli, 2016(very)
Full Moderate Limited

Offshore

800
2,000
5,000

Level of knowledge–

CO2 injections
CO2 sequestration
OperatingFutureCompleted
CO2 utilization
CO2-EOR (U.S.)

Figure 7.1. Distribution of conventional CO2 storage worldwide. NOTE: Some areas are not fully explored and characterized.
Source: Kolosz and Wilcox, 202011

through the Molucca straights, run from enormous
logistics hubs and terminals including Singapore,
Shenzhen and Hong Kong.
■ North Sea: Much of the world’s bioenergy is consumed
in the North Sea region, including the Drax plantat Humber and biodiesel consumption in northern
Europe. Biomass products enter the large industrial
ports of the region and are often converted or
upgraded on site. These ports border well mapped andunderstood CO2 storage resources under the North
Sea, including Scotland, the Netherlands and coastal
Norway. This region hosts the world’s first commercialscale CO2 storage project (Sleipner) and the world’s
first CO2 shipping project (Northern Lights).
■ California and Alberta: These two geographies
combine excellent geological storage options, worldclass farming and agribusiness. They also lie adjacent
to enormous timber stands and working forests.
Importantly, insect infestations have killed hundreds ofmillions of trees in these areas, creating both a terrible
fire risk and potential BiCRS feedstocks.13 Alberta
boasts some of the best CO2 storage infrastructure in
the world, including the new Alberta Carbon Trunk
January 2021

Line and three projects storing CO2 from hydrogenproduction (none yet from biohydrogen). California isunder active development for CO2 storage and appears
to be able to store tens of billions of tons of CO2 with
BiCRS.14

BiCRS-Specific CO2 Capture
Biomass conversion produces by-product CO2. Althoughsome conversion approaches (such as combustion for
power generation) are well-suited to conventional CO2
capture, other approaches (such as production of liquids
by fast pyrolysis) are not. Several conversion approaches
present opportunities (such as low-cost capture fromhigh-purity sources) that could be relevant as BiCRS
scales.
Gasification: Biomass gasification has produced powerand chemical feedstocks for years, notably in Europe.
Many studies see opportunity for scaling up gasificationof biomass (especially woody or cellulosic feedstocks)
and conversion to hydrogen or carbonaceous fuels. In
these systems, CO2 can be fully or partially separatedusing conventional liquid solvents and water-gas shift31reactions. However, many cellulosic feedstocks createa challenge for ash-handling systems, including rapid
consumption of refractory linings, agglomeration andplugging.15 Additional work should focus on modified
gasifier designs specifically built for biomass (e.g., forbiomass-produced ash and better heat balance forheterogeneous feedstocks).
Fast pyrolysis: Pyrolysis involves heating biomass in a
low-oxygen environment. Products are a mixture of gas,liquid and solid. In slow pyrolysis, low temperatures
are used to remove water and some organic vapors,leaving biochar—a charcoal-like residue—as theprincipal product. In fast pyrolysis, somewhat higher
temperatures are used to break down organic
components into a mixture of oils and sugars that canbe utilized for liquid fuels. These systems still produce
some biochar (typically ~10 % of the original mass).
Fast pyrolysis systems can be relatively small comparedto gasifiers and are generally considered to be usefulin distributed systems where biomass is transported
a short distance and the valuable bio oils, sugars andbiochar are then transported to where they will be used.
Variations in the temperatures, processing times andcapture of volatile products create a large number of
options in pyrolysis systems.16
Fermentation: Conventional fermentation merits special
consideration due to by-product release of high-purity
CO2. This stream can be captured, compressed andstored with very low additional costs.17 This is thebasis for the Archer Danials Midland Company (ADM)
project in Decatur, IL and is also the largest sourceof CO2 for the US merchant market.18 This feature offermentation creates potential opportunities in key
geographies (e.g., cane ethanol in Brazil), as well as
potential future opportunities for cellulosic ethanol
production. Economic analysis of potential ethanol
developments should include capture and storage of thispure by-product CO2 and seek CO2 removal opportunities
accordingly.
Biogas and anaerobic digesters: Landfill and digester
biogas commonly contain large fractions of bothmethane and CO2. Many conventional technologies
exist to separate these two gases. Unfortunately, mostof these technologies are developed to operate at highpressure. Since biogas is produced at ambient pressures,
separation of CO2 commonly requires substantial cost
increases, either through pressurization or oxy-fired
combustion. Thus, low-temperature biogas separation
January 2021

technology would assist in capturing the co-produced
CO2.

Storing CO2 in Long-Lived Products
CO2 can be stored in a number of long-lived products.19,20
The idea of a “circular carbon economy” has recently
gained prominence and attention (e.g., Circular Carbon
Network, 202021; IEF 202022).

Concrete & durable carbon
Concrete, composed of cement and aggregate (sand andgravel), is the second most used substance on Earth after
water, with tens of billion tons of annual production anduse. Concrete is very long-lived, commonly lasting forover 100 years and in many cases for thousands of years.
The large volume and durability of concrete makes it
an attractive target for CO2 storage. Novel formulationsof cement allow CO2 to cure and bind concrete while
effectively trapping it in mineral form. In addition, CO2
can be converted to minerals and used as aggregate andsimilar additives. If the CO2 entering this system comesfrom biomass conversion, this CO2 has been removed
from the atmosphere and would be stored for the
long-term.23
One can also add biomass fibers to cement andconcrete.24,25 Although this approach provides somebenefits in terms of material performance, it is unclear
how well it will scale. CO2 can also be converted toother durable carbon forms, such as carbon nanotubes,
carbon black and carbon composites. Current markets
for these products are small26 but have the potential
to displace certain building materials (e.g., steel rebar)
and scale. As in the case of concrete, if the CO2 used isbiomass-derived, that CO2 has been removed from theatmosphere and stored for the long-term.23

BiocharBiochar is a recalcitrant charcoal created from pyrolysisof biomass at high temperatures (300-700 °C).27 Biochar
can be used in many capacities. In the agriculture sector,
its most prominent uses have been as an animal feed
and as a soil amendment. When biochar is added toagricultural soils, it can increase crop yield by enhancing
soil hydrological and nutrient properties.28 However,numerous applications for biochar are emerging outsideof the agricultural sector. For instance, biochar has
potential applications in the transportation (concrete
filler), water treatment (filtration), building (filtration,32

% CARBON REMAINING SEQUESTERED

99.9
99.9
99.2

10 yearsGeologic

100 years(onshore, well
regulated)

1000 years

Orientedstrand board

99

75.1

54.4

97.1
91

Biochar37
Bio-derived
polyethylene

67.3
0

10

20

30

% OF CARBON REMAINING IN STORAGE

40

50

60

76.9
74.3
70

80

90

100

Figure 7.2. Multiple products can contribute to CO2 removal over geologically relevant time periods. Estimates of carbon
remaining sequestered over 1000 years. Source: Dees et al.30

BOX 7-1 Direct bioliquid injection
and disposal (DBID)
Deep disposal of CO2 lies at the center of most prior research, regulation and policy analysis associated withbioenergy production (BECCS). However, deep geological disposal of CO2 is not the only potential pathway for BiCRS
carbon removal. It is possible to convert biomass into a form well suited for disposal and directly store this biomass
in deep geological formations. For example, gasification or fast pyrolysis can convert biomass to bioliquids or bio-oils
which can then be directly injected underground without further processing. One clear benefit to this approach is
avoided costs for downstream conversion—if the goal is CO2 removal and geospheric return, then this approach
avoids the downstream capital and operating costs associated with further conversion.
One company, Charm Industrial, is developing this technology. Charm currently gathers bio-oils from a fast pyrolysis
unit in Canada, ships the liquids to Kansas and injects them into fit-for-purpose salt caverns for disposal. The
company plans to improve this system through co-location and process intensification.
This approach has several clear benefits. First, bioliquid disposal in the US requires a Class IA
permit for injection (non-hazardous well), which is a lower regulatory burden than that forCO2 disposal with a Class VI well. Use of existing Class II wells (oil-field injection) is also
possible and could further reduce cost and regulatory burden. The second benefit is costsavings (see above). This approach also has substantial limitations. One is that the only
salable product is CO2 removal services, so no other revenues are available to cover
upstream conversion costs and processing. Second, there is no policy support today toprovide revenues for this approach—neither 45Q nor the CA low-carbon fuel standard
recognize bio-oil disposal as qualifying. It is unclear if this approach qualifies under theEuropean Trading System.

January 2021

33

insulation), electronics, cosmetics, textiles and medical
sectors.
Although still in its nascent stages, a market forbiochar in the US is steadily growing. The US Biochar
Initiative (USBI) estimated that 200,000 bone dry tonsof biomass are consumed yearly to create biochar
and that 35,000-70,000 tons per year of biochar are
currently produced in the US.29 Currently, markets forbiochar are not well established as there is substantial
volatility and uncertainty surrounding biochar prices.31
Additionally, while farmers are considered the primarycustomers of biochar, wide adoption of biochar into
agricultural practices has not yet been achieved. Industry
participants are now focusing on educating farmers to
help scale the industry.

discarded. In the US context, most PE will be landfilled,
where only a fraction of the degradable carbon will
return to the atmosphere. The lifetime of plastics in theenvironment is not well-understood and estimates vary
widely.
1

Keith, David W. “Why Capture CO2 from the Atmosphere?”
Science 325, no. 5948 (September 2009) at p. 1654-55(https://science.sciencemag.org/content/325/5948/1654.
abstract).

2

Friedmann, S. Julio, Alex Zapantis, Brad Page, Chris Consoli,
Zhiyuan Fan, Ian Havercroft, Harry Liu, Emeka Ochu, Nabeela
Raji, Dominic Rassool, Hadia Sheerazi, And Alex Townsend.
“Net-Zero and Geospheric Return: Action Today for 2030
and Beyond.” Columbia SIPA: Center for Global Energy Policy
and Global CCS Institute, September 2020 (https://www.
energypolicy.columbia.edu/sites/default/files/file-uploads/
NetZero2030_CGEP-Report_092120-5_0.pdf).

Wood & durable bioproducts

3

There is an extensive literature on the emissions andsequestration benefits of storing carbon in long-lived
wood products, particularly in buildings. One prominent
example is oriented strand board (OSB), an engineeredwood panel widely-used as a load-bearing construction
material. Like polyethylene, OSB undergoes a multiphase life, with a use-phase and an end-of-life phasethat may involve recycling or secondary use and asignificant portion managed in landfills.

Grandoni, Dino. “The Energy 202: California's Fires
Are Putting a Huge Amount of Carbon Dioxide into theAir.” The Washington Post (September 2020) https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/09/17/
energy-202-california-fires-are-putting-huge-amountcarbon-dioxide-into-air/.

4

Anderegg, William R. L., Anna T. Trugman, Grayson Badgley,
Christa M. Anderson, Ann Bartuska, Philippe Ciais, Danny
Cullenward, et al. “Climate-Driven Risks to the Climate
Mitigation Potential of Forests.” Science 368, no. 6497 (June2020) at p. eaaz7005 (https://science.sciencemag.org/
content/368/6497/eaaz7005).

5

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), 2018:“Global warming of 1.5°C: An IPCC Special Report on theimpacts of global warming of 1.5°C above pre-industrial
levels and related global greenhouse gas emission pathways,
in the context of strengthening the global response to thethreat of climate change, sustainable development, andefforts to eradicate poverty.” edited by V. Masson-Delmotte,
P. Zhai, H. O. Pörtner, D. Roberts, J. Skea, P.R.Shukla,A. Pirani,
W. Moufouma-Okia, C.Péan, R. Pidcock, S. Connors, J. B.
R. Matthews, Y. Chen, X. Zhou, M. I. Gomis, E. Lonnoy, T.
Maycock, M. Tignor, T. Waterfield. (2018) (https://www.ipcc.
ch/sr15/).

6

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 2005.
“Carbon Dioxide Capture and Storage.” edited by OgunladeDavidson Bert Metz, Heleen de Coninck, Manuela Loos andLeo Meyer. UK, 2005 (https://www.ipcc.ch/report/carbondioxide-capture-and-storage/).

7

IEA 2016, “20 years of carbon capture and storage.” IEA,
Paris https://www.iea.org/reports/20-years-of-carboncapture-and-storage (2016).

8

National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine(NASEM). “Negative Emissions Technologies and Reliable
Sequestration: A Research Agenda.” Washington, DC:
The National Academies Press. (2019) https://doi.
org/10.17226/25259.

There are additional emerging innovative wood
products, including mass timber. Mass timber is acommercially fabricated composite panel productcomposed of cross-layered pieces of dimensional lumber
or wood veneer bound together by structural adhesives,
nails or dowels, so that the whole panel acts as a single
load-bearing or floor element. Mass timber products are
all relatively new to the US but well developed in Europe
and Japan. These products enable use of wood forbuildings taller than the current limit of 65 feet, enabling
greater use of timber in construction. They allow weight
reduction in buildings, thus reducing seismic demand on
the building’s lateral system and reducing gravity systemfoundation loading. Challenges include market formation
activities, testing of commercial tree species of particularinterest, and utilization of non-merchantable biomass.32
Long-term sequestration of biogenic carbon can also
be achieved in plastics, such as polyethylene (PE).
Plastics are engineered to resist physical and biologicaldegradation. At the end of the use-life of a PE product,
it may be recycled, re-used, combusted, landfilled orJanuary 2021

34

9Kearns, Jordan, Gary Teletzke, Jeffrey Palmer, Hans
Thomann, Haroon Kheshgi, Yen-Heng Henry Chen, Sergey
Paltsev, and Howard Herzog. “Developing a Consistent
Database for Regional Geologic CO2 Storage Capacity
Worldwide.” Energy Procedia 114 (July 2017) at p. 4697-709(https://doi.org/10.1016/j.egypro.2017.03.1603).

10 Consoli, Christopher P., and Neil Wildgust. “Current

Status of Global Storage Resources.” Energy Procedia
114 (July 2017) at p. 4623-28 (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.
egypro.2017.03.1866).

11 Kolosz, B. and Wilcox, J. (eds), 2020 (in press), A primer on

Carbon Dioxide Removal.

12 Baik, Ejeong, Daniel L. Sanchez, Peter A. Turner, Katharine J.

Mach, Christopher B. Field, and Sally M. Benson. “Geospatial
Analysis of near-Term Potential for Carbon-Negative
Bioenergy in the United States.” Proceedings of the National
Academy of Sciences 115, no. 13 (March 2018) at p. 3290-95(https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1720338115).

13 Tubbesing, Carmen L., José Daniel Lara, John J. Battles, PeterW. Tittmann, and Daniel M. Kammen. “Characterizationof the Woody Biomass Feedstock Potential Resulting from
California’s Drought.” Scientific Reports 10, no. 1 (January2020) at p. 1096 (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598020-57904-z).

14 Sarah E. Baker, Joshuah K. Stolaroff, George Peridas, Simon

H. Pang, Hannah M. Goldstein, Felicia R. Lucci, Wenqin Li,
Eric W. Slessarev, Jennifer Pett-Ridge, Frederick J. Ryerson,
Jeff L. Wagoner, Whitney Kirkendall, Roger D. Aines, Daniel L.
Sanchez, Bodie Cabiyo, Joffre Baker, Sean McCoy, Sam Uden,
Ron Runnebaum, Jennifer Wilcox, Peter C. Psarras, Hélène
Pilorgé, Noah McQueen, Daniel Maynard, Colin McCormick.
“Getting to Neutral: Options for Negative Carbon Emissions
in California.” Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory,
LLNL-TR-796100 (January, 2020, ) (https://www-gs.llnl.gov/
content/assets/docs/energy/Getting_to_Neutral.pdf).

15 Lacey, Jeffrey A., John E. Aston, and Vicki S. Thompson.

“Wear Properties of Ash Minerals in Biomass.” [In English].
Frontiers in Energy Research 6, no. 119 (November 2018)(https://doi.org/10.3389/fenrg.2018.00119).

19 Issam Dairanieh, Bernard David, Fred Mason, Gerry Stokes,

Steve de Brun, David Sandalow, Colin McCormick “Carbon
Dioxide Utilization (CO2U) - ICEF Roadmap 1.0.” November
2016 (https://www.icef-forum.org/pdf/2018/roadmap/
CO2U_Roadmap_ICEF2016.pdf).

20 David Sandalow, Roger Aines, Julio Friedmann, Colin

McCormick, Sean McCoy. “Carbon Dioxide Utilization (CO2U)
ICEF Roadmap 2.0.” November 2017 (https://www.icefforum.org/pdf/2018/roadmap/CO2U_Roadmap_ICEF2017.
pdf).

21 Circular Carbon Network. “Catalyzing Capital for the Circular

Carbon Economy.” (Accessed September 2020) https://circularcarbon.org/.

22 International Energy Forum (IEF). “IEF Insight Brief: The

Circular Carbon Economy.” (March 2020) https://www.ief.
org/_resources/files/comparative-analysis/march-ief-insightbrief---the-circular-carbon-economy.pdf.

23 National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, andMedicine. Negative Emissions Technologies and Reliable
Sequestration: A Research Agenda. [in English] Washington,
DC: The National Academies Press, 2019. (https://doi.
org/10.17226/25259).

24 Lumingkewas, R.H. Development of materials forconstruction with low environmental impact made withlow content of cement and with natural fibers. Matériaux
composites et construction. Université de Bretagne
Sud, (2015) (https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/7119/
bfd2e8a59b66f252c4fbed37cbf1754e9eb5.pdf).

25 Girijappa, Yashas Gowda Thyavihalli, Sanjay Mavinkere

Rangappa, Jyotishkumar Parameswaranpillai, and Suchart
Siengchin. “Natural Fibers as Sustainable and Renewable
Resource for Development of Eco-Friendly Composites: A
Comprehensive Review.” [In English]. Frontiers in Materials
6, no. 226 (September 2019) (https://doi.org/10.3389/
fmats.2019.00226).

26 Carbon180, Building a New Carbon Economy: An Innovation

Plan, New Carbon Economy Consortium, Sept. 2018, https://carbon180.org/s/ccr02innovationplanFNL-3wkx.pdf

16 Laird, David, Robert Brown, James Amonette, and

27 Anderson, N.; Jones, J.G.; Page-Dumroese, D.; McCollum, D.;

Johannes Lehmann. “Review of the Pyrolysis Platform
for Coproducing Bio-Oil and Biochar.” Biofuels,
Bioproducts and Biorefining 3 (September 2009) at
p. 547-62 (https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/
download?doi=10.1.1.183.1445&rep=rep1&type=pdf).

Baker, S.; Loeffler, D.; Chung, W. A “Comparison of Producer
Gas, Biochar, and Activated Carbon from Two Distributed
Scale Thermochemical Conversion Systems Used to Process
Forest Biomass.” Energies, 6, (January 2013) at p. 164-183(https://doi.org/10.3390/en6010164).

17 Sanchez, Daniel L., Nils Johnson, Sean T. McCoy, Peter A.

28 Pourhashem, Ghasideh, Shih Yu Hung, Kenneth B. Medlock,

Turner, and Katharine J. Mach. “Near-Term Deployment of
Carbon Capture and Sequestration from Biorefineries in
the United States.” Proceedings of the National Academy of
Sciences 115, no. 19 (May 2018) at p. 4875-80 (https://doi.
org/10.1073/pnas.1719695115).

18 Rushing, Sam. “Ethanol CO2 by-Product Is Critically Important

to Merchant CO2 Industry.” Biofuels Digest (April 2019),
https://www.biofuelsdigest.com/bdigest/2019/04/17/
ethanol-CO2-by-product-is-critically-important-to-merchantCO2-industry/.

January 2021

and Caroline A. Masiello. “Policy Support for Biochar: Review
and Recommendations.” GCB Bioenergy 11, no. 2 (February2019) at p. 364-80 (https://doi.org/10.1111/gcbb.12582).

29 US Biochar Initiative (USBI): Kathleen Draper, Harry Groot,

Tom Miles, Martin Twer. “Survey and Analysis of the Us
Biochar Industry: Preliminary Report Draft.” WERC Project,(August 2018) (https://biochar-us.org/sites/default/
files/news-files/Preliminary%20Biochar%20Industry%20
Report%2008162018_0.pdf).

35

30 Dees, John P., Hannah M. Goldstein, A.J. Simon, Daniel

L. Sanchez. “Leveraging the bioeconomy for carbon
drawdown,” (Manuscript in preparation).

31 Campbell, Robert M., Nathaniel M. Anderson, Daren E.

Daugaard, and Helen T. Naughton. “Financial Viability of
Biofuel and Biochar Production from Forest Biomass in theFace of Market Price Volatility and Uncertainty.” Applied
Energy 230 (November 2018) at p. 330-43 (https://doi.
org/10.1016/j.apenergy.2018.08.085).

32 Sanchez, Daniel L., Teal Zimring, Catherine Mater, Katie

Harrell, Stephen Kelley, Lech Muszynski, Ben Edwards,
Samantha Smith, Kyle Monper, AnnaClaire Marley, Max
Russer. “Literature Review and Evaluation of Research
Gaps to Support Wood Products Innovation.” Joint Institutefor Wood Products Innovation. A report submitted to the
California Board of Forestry and Fire Protection Agreement# 9CA04450. (2020) (https://bof.fire.ca.gov/media/9688/
full-12-a-jiwpi_formattedv12_3_05_2020.pdf).

January 2021

36

CHAPTER 8:RESEARCH AGENDA
For BiCRS to achieve its full potential, research on awide range of topics is essential. Technology and social
science issues are both important. This chapter discusses
research needs in the years ahead.

A. Technology
1. Hydrogen
Biomass can be used to produce hydrogen, with CO2emissions from these processes captured and stored.
Most existing literature focuses on biomass gasification,
followed by water-gas-shift and CO2 removal, to producehydrogen at large scales. Research needs for thisapproach include the following:■ Biomass feedstock handling and pre-treatment

methods, as well as autothermal processes that
require no external fuel■ Integration of hydrogen production withtransportation, such as liquefaction or conversion toammonia
In addition, two less-studied conversion processes may
be useful:■ Pyrolysis-based methods, including the use of catalytic

steam reforming to produce hydrogen from bio-oil.
Pyrolysis processes are typically smaller scale thangasification processes.
■ Supercritical water extraction, which involves theuse of supercritical fluid solvent. Supercritical watergasification can deal directly with wet biomass without
drying and has high gasification efficiency at lower
temperatures than air or steam gasification.

2. New pathways not linked to energy
production
Many BiCRS processes that produce energy are
relatively advanced and well understood. In comparison,many pathways that do not produce energy are
under-explored. These pathways present enormous
opportunities for CO2 removal that merit attention fromthe research community:

January 2021

■ Biochar: While biochar potentially represents a stable,

long-term form of carbon storage in soil, physicalcharacteristics of the feedstock and processing steps,
as well as environmental factors such as precipitationand soil conditions, strongly influence this stability.
As a result, there is a large degree of uncertainty inthe durability of carbon sequestration in biochar. In
addition to engineering and better modeling of carbon
stability, supportive market research and market
development is necessary to increase demand forbiochar.
■ Engineered wood products: Various forms of lumber
can be treated to produce durable construction
materials, including cross-laminated timber and woodfiber insulation boards. These products can substitutefor conventional construction materials, such asconcrete and steel in some architectural applications,displacing associated emissions and storing carbon
in a durable form.1 Research is needed on improved
methods of treatment, advanced construction
techniques and new application areas.
■ Bioliquid injection: As mentioned in Chapter 7, theprivate sector is beginning to pursue deep geologicaldisposal of bioliquids as an alternative form ofgeospheric return. With the goal of bioliquid disposal,
many additional potential conversion approaches canbe considered (e.g., direct liquefaction and maximizing
production of black liquor). Processes that avoided
production of bioliquids as waste can instead be
optimized with deep disposal in mind.
■ Macroalgae abyssal dispatch: As a biotic means of CO2
drawdown, macroalgae has specific benefits, includinglack of land and fresh water requirements and direct
removal of CO2 from oceans (thereby reducing local
acidification) as mentioned in Chapter 4. Bypassing
harvesting and conversion, one can instead send kelp
and seaweed intact to the deep ocean, avoiding thecosts of drying and processing and maximizing CO2
removal. Several research groups (e.g., Yale Carbon
Containment Lab2) and companies (e.g., Running
Tide3) have begun work on macroalgae disposal
schemes, including cultivation of negatively buoyant
kelp (which would require no processing to dispatch tothe abyssal plain).
■ Biofiber entombment: Biofibers have been considered
optional additions to cement and concrete as meansof enhancing their performance, either for strengthor durability.4 Addition of microfibers can reduce the37total required amount of cement in concrete mixes forconstruction, with both economic and environmental
benefits. Although still at an early stage, thesecomposite materials could potentially store large
volumes of carbon as biofiber composites. Research
to better understand preferred feedstocks, treatment
requirements, techno-economics, performance andtotal potential loadings are needed.

relatively high precision. Many governments operate
Earth-observing satellites for this purpose and makethe resulting data freely available online shortly after
it is acquired. In general, this makes it possible to
track changes to the amount and type of vegetationon land surfaces in near-real time, within days of thechanges occurring, as well as to make forecasts of future
productivity.5,6This list is by no means exhaustive. Rather, it is meant toillustrate the opportunities in a BiCRS framework.

Earth-observing satellites use two basic sensing methods
to measure the type and amount of vegetation on land
surfaces: optical and radar.7-9

3. Modular fast pyrolysis
We believe that further development of modular
systems could contribute to meaningful BiCRS, including
its criteria for carbon removal and do-no-harm. As
discussed above, pyrolysis processes are typicallysmaller scale than gasification processes and may be
more suitable for dispersed biomass resources. Twochallenges persist. The first is the complex chemistry of
produced pyrolysis products, which can lead to clogging
and deposition of tars and other residues in the capture
equipment. Upgrading and processing bioliquids tousable products presents consistent challenges, thoughcommercial developers like Ensyn have made significant
progress. Development of methods to make bio-oil
stable over longer times and more easily refined intotransportation fuels will be important for large-scale
application. Also, many fast pyrolysis units are relatively
small and modular, producing biochar as its primary
form of carbon removal. Some CO2 is commonly
produced during fast pyrolysis, either in association withsyngas and bioliquids or from application of external
heat. CO2 capture and storage would require low-cost
modular capture technology to match their output.
Overcoming these challenges should be the focus ofapplied R&D to improve the performance, capacity andmodular construction of fast-pyrolysis units.

4. Satellite monitoring and data analysis
Because of the importance of land use/land cover (LULC)
change to the life-cycle emissions associated with BiCRS,
any large-scale implementation will require carefulmonitoring of LULC in all locations that provide biomass.
LULC change can be monitored in a variety of ways, but
the most effective approach is to use satellite-based
remote sensing, which allows global coverage andJanuary 2021

Optical sensors, such as the Operational Land Imager(OLI) on the US Landsat 8 satellite and the MultiSpectral
Instrument (MSI) on the European Space Agency’s
Sentinel-2 satellite, passively measure reflected sunlightfrom the Earth’s surface in optical and near-infrared
wavelengths.
■ Earth-observing satellites with optical sensors

capture imagery from almost all land locations on
Earth (extreme north and south latitudes are usually
excluded) and revisit each location in intervals ranging
from days to weeks. To minimize variations in solar
illumination between returns, these satellites arecommonly placed in sun-synchronous orbits, meaningthat they revisit locations at the same time of day(during daylight hours).
■ Despite the many advantages of this sensing method,
it suffers from the inability to image through clouds.
This is a significant limitation, particularly in tropicaland subtropical regions that have high cloud cover. In
some cases over half of revisits fail to produce usual
imagery because of cloud cover, slowing the rate at
which LULC changes can be detected.10
Radar sensors, such as the Phased-Array L-band
Synthetic Aperture Radar 2 (PALSAR-2) instrument on
the Japanese ALOS-2 satellite and the C-Band Synthetic
Aperture Radar (C-SAR) instrument on the European
Space Agency’s Sentinel-1 satellite, actively scan L-, C-, orX-band microwave energy toward the Earth’s surface andmeasure the amplitude and phase of the reflection.11, 12■ These instruments can measure details of thesurface elevation at transverse resolutions of several
meters and sub-meter vertical resolution. These
measurements can be analyzed to yield detailed
information on the canopy height of forested areas
and the vegetation type and quantity in other areas.

38

■ Importantly, the microwave frequencies used by these

instruments penetrate through clouds, meaning thesensors are able to produce useful data even in regionswith extensive cloud coverage. Further, because thesensor does not require reflected sunlight, it can takemeasurements at night, increasing the effective revisit
rate.
Optical and radar spaceborne measurements can besupplemented by LiDAR measurements. While LiDAR
operates on a similar principle to radar, it uses optical
wavelengths and is therefore able to resolve muchsmaller details, giving it higher spatial resolution. In
the context of biomass measurements, this type ofsensing is able to penetrate through the forest canopy
to measure forest structure in three dimensions,which can be extremely valuable in improving biomass
quantification.13-15 LiDAR is primarily used on airborne
platforms, meaning that data are only acquired
infrequently and are limited in spatial extent. However,it has begun to be used from orbit for forest monitoring,
notably the Global Ecosystem Dynamics Investigation(GEDI) system on board the International Space Station16
and the Ice, Cloud and Land Elevation Satellite-2(ICESat-2).
The breadth of remote sensing data available for LULC
monitoring has led to the growth of a large international
academic research community on the topic. However,
the results of this research are often difficult to translate
into policy contexts since they involve complex analyses
and are not designed for continual operation. To serve
this need, projects have emerged to rapidly translate theremote monitoring results into more accessible formats
for policymaking, enforcement and related uses. These
projects include Global Forest Watch, CropWatch, theForest Observation System, Global Fishing Watch andClimate TRACE, among many others.17
Many needs remain for enhancing LULC-monitoring
capability and ensuring it continues to be available into
the future:18■ Governments must continue to invest in

development, launch and operation of Earthobserving satellites. While the increasing availabilityof private, commercial satellite imagery can be helpful
for biomass monitoring, it cannot substitute forflagship remote-sensing missions by the public sector.
■ Governments should commit to the maximum
reasonable degree of Earth observation data
January 2021

availability, including use of modern data-indexing
and -retrieval systems for optimal data access.
■ Development of algorithms for interpreting raw
remote sensing data and refining biomass estimates
is a priority, particularly with the introduction andapplication of advanced machine learning methods.19
Governments should support continued R&D in thisarea.
■ Governments and private purchasers of biomass
for carbon removal should proactively develop
systems for LULC monitoring, either individually or inpartnerships, and commit to using those systems to
track the impacts of biomass purchases. Additionally,purchasers should develop clear guidelines on what
land-use practices are acceptable and suspend
purchases if these practices are not followed.

5. Plant breeding and genetic modification toenhance carbon uptake
While significant research attention has been paid todeveloping optimal crops for energy production, far lessresearch has focused on developing crops that optimize
life-cycle carbon removal. Such a “carbon-optimized”
plant could be part of a BiCRS system that achieves far
higher carbon removal rates than a system using wastes
or even conventional dedicated energy crops.
Research to develop this kind of plant using plant
breeding or genetic modification would focus on
several factors in the plant life-cycle. One of theseis to identify and breed varietals that increase soil
carbon during growth, using in situ measurement
tools and other methods such as those underdevelopment by the US Department of Energy (DOE)
Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E)
ROOTS program.20 A related approach is to identify
varietals that are optimized for a particular biomass
conversion mechanism, which may include improved
susceptibility to thermochemical treatment orpelletization. A complementary approach would be tofocus on engineered enhancements to the efficiency ofphotosynthesis in fixing atmospheric carbon, including
improvements to the enzyme Rubisco to speed up
turnover time and reduce oxygen fixation leading tophotorespiration21; optimization of other enzymes in theCalvin-Benson cycle22; and increasing photoprotection
recovery.23

39

An additional approach is to modify the durability ofplant biomass. Increasing the durability of biomass(recalcitrance) could delay decomposition and therelease of stored carbon through techniques suchas enhanced expression of the biopolymer suberin24
and enhanced metal hyperaccumulation for fungal
resistance.25 This approach would be preferable for BiCRS
approaches that result in durable biomass productswith minimal conversion. An alternative strategy is todecrease the durability of biomass by methods such as
downregulating the production of lignin or enhancing
the incorporation of molecules in lignin that aid biomass
pretreatments.26 This strategy would be preferable
for conversion-intensive BiCRS approaches in order toreduce the cost and energy consumption of conversion.
In addition to these individual engineering techniques,
a comprehensive R&D effort of the potential for plant
breeding or genetic modification to contribute to
BiCRS would include a system-level “carbon impact”
assessment of the plant and the full life-cycle of harvest,
treatment and use. The holistic impact on plant carbon
fixation rates from these pathways remains poorly
understood, as does the potential impact on soil carbon
accumulation.27

B. Social Science
Very large-scale deployment of BiCRS could affect foodsecurity, clean energy development, biodiversity, water
resources and other services of value to society. (SeeGough and Vaughan, 201528; Fuss et al., 201429; Smithet al., 201630 for discussion of these issues related to
BECCS). Addressing the relationship between these
topics and BiCRS will require social science researchdrawing from a number of disciplines including
economics, political science and sociology, as well as
related fields including agronomy, nutrition, hydrology
and engineering.
Economics provides essential tools for understanding
indirect land-use change, for example. When examining
the impact of agricultural and energy policies in one
market with land-use change far away, prices and capital
flows provide important information. Political science
provides important tools for evaluating policy options for

January 2021

promoting BiCRS and designing multinational institutions
to help track biomass trade and other topics. Sociology
provides important tools for understanding community
dynamics in response to the growth of BiCRS.
In the study of carbon removal using biomass,technologies often get more attention than social
science questions, such as who provides the biomass,
how is that controlled and who benefits?31, 32 In addition,
the existing social science research related to BiCRS
often focuses on “barriers” to technology adoption,rather than exploring technology adoption as aninherently social process. The limited research relevant
to BiCRS looks at public acceptance or social license,
rather than opportunities for communities. Future
research can move beyond “social impact” to identify
opportunities for communities along the BiCRS value
chain.33
Policy research will also be central to the developmentof BiCRS. We discuss policy issues in Chapter 9.
Interdisciplinary social science research can help
illuminate the social dynamics of BiCRS more broadly.
One leading author divides this social science research
into four categories33:
1. Synthesis research that looks at recent and current
lessons on carbon-sink enhancement, scaling up
biofuels/the bioeconomy, and past and present
energy transitions, including on the investment gap
with CCS and clean energy technologies
2. Regional and landscape-level analysis of carbonremoval technologies
3. Analysis of policymaker and citizen demand for andknowledge of negative emissions
4. Work on technology diffusion, adoption and transfer
into different socio-economic contexts
Each of these kinds of studies advance BiCRS byincreasing social demand.
The authors of this document are not social scientists
but believe social science issues are of central
importance with respect to BiCRS. This is an importantarea for future work, which we have only had theopportunity to partially develop in this roadmap.

40

POLICY,
STANDARDS &SOCIAL SCIENCE

Medium-term(2-8 years)

Study benefits tobiomass-exporting nations
and communities fromBiCRS projects

Improve methodology forassessing indirect land-use
change from BiCRS projects

National governments
adopt incentives forbiomass-based CO2
removal and storage

Leading nations adopt initial
BiCRS biomass standards

Establish UNFCCCBiCRS Platform

Develop a multinational
platform for sharing ofsatellite land use data

Detailed regional models of
BiCRS logistics optimization(energy, feedstock, CO2)

Expand hydrogen andammonia shipping capacityand port infrastructure; plan
key infrastructure elements

Construct BiCRS infrastructure, with an emphasis on
local carbon storage

Near-term(1-3 years)

Medium-term(2-8 years)

Long-term(7-17 years)

Analyze optimum uses ofwaste biomass and identify
best candidates for
BiCRS feedstock

Develop unconventional
biomass, including GMO,
wet, and marine feedstocks

Demonstrate unconventional
biomass, including GMO,
wet, and marine feedstocks

Pilot modular fast pyrolysis(FP) across a small set ofdesigns and feedstocks

Accelerate improvementfor FP; Pilot projects for
non-energy BiCRS
pathways

Analyze “removal capacity”
of current dedicatedenergy crops

Identify and/or develop“removal-optimized”
dedicated terrestrial
feedstock crops

Demonstrate multi-megaton
CO2 removal projects using
BiCRS in key geographies

Assess co-location of
biomass feedstocks &geological storage

Expand remote sensing
capabilities for land use
monitoring

Deploy remote sensing
capabilities as a coretechnical element of
BiCRS accounting

Long-term(7-17 years)

Implement multinational
monitoring, reporting &verification (MRV) protocol
for BiCRS market
Implement biomass
sustainability procurement
standards based on
MRV system

FEEDSTOCKS &TECHNOLOGY

Figure 8.1. Innovation Roadmap – Biomass Carbon Removal and Storage (BiCRS)

January 2021

008

007

LOGISTICS &TRANSPORT

Near-term(1-3 years)

41

C. Integrated Analyses
In addition to research on discrete technology and social
science issues, integrated analyses addressing bothtechnology and social science issues will be requiredfor BiCRS to scale. Techno-economic assessment, which
addresses both technology and economic issues, is oneof the most familiar forms of this type of analysis.
Life-cycle greenhouse emissions analyses will beespecially important as BiCRS scales. BiCRS processes canbe complex, involving a wide range of inputs, transport
across considerable distances and second-order impacts.
Understanding the emissions implications of all parts ofa BiCRS process is essential to evaluating whether thatprocess has achieved its principal goal: net removal ofcarbon from the atmosphere. These lifecycle analyses
may often require insights concerning both technology
and social science issues.

D. Research Timeline
Significant resources will be required for the research
agenda described above. For BiCRS to scale, some
topics must be addressed in the near-term while othertopics can be evaluated over longer time periods. We
suggest the following rough timeline for BiCRS research
priorities.

Near-Term (1-3 years)■ Identify waste biomass volumes around the world andalternative uses for it■ Evaluate jobs potential associated with BiCRS
implementation■ Evaluate local opportunities based on biomass
availability, technology choice and product need
■ Evaluate relative merits of biomass transport versus
local processing and storage versus CO2 transport to
new locations■ Evaluate markets for solid products like engineeredwood and wallboard■ Conduct intensive applied R&D program on improving
the performance, capacity and modular constructionof fast pyrolysis units

January 2021

■ Determine and reduce environmental impacts of BiCRS

facilities■ Develop clear rules for evaluating the environmental,

climate, economic and social impacts of BiCRS■ Analyze new and existing data on the impacts, benefits
and tradeoffs of dedicated biomass from forests

Mid-Term (2-8 years)■ Evaluate if ongoing or new use of standing timbershould be included as an appropriate biomass
resource, based on new data and analyses■ Evaluate ability to supplement waste biomass withenvironmentally harvested annual crops■ Evaluate ability to grow and harvest longer-rotation
crops like poplar■ Determine the likely impact of production of thesecrops on worldwide agricultural supply■ Determine the local jobs impact of dedicated BiCRS
crops■ Determine the environmental impact of these crops■ Create a framework for determining the overall risk/
benefit balance of growing and using these crops
locally; extend framework to the benefit of exportingthese crops and receiving significant climate service
payments from receiving countries■ Develop both local and remote means to monitor andensure that environmental and climate goals are being
met by local implementation of BiCRS■ Evaluate the social impact of early adoptions of BiCRS

Long-Term (7-15 years)■ Evaluate the global capacity for BiCRS under social,economic and environmental constraints■ Develop high-efficiency BiCRS facilities, especially for

products determined to be most beneficial locally■ Evaluate whether first-of-a-kind BiCRS technologies
still meet social, economic and environmental goals orwhether they should be phased out

421

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Mitchell, Anthea L., Ake Rosenqvist, and Brice Mora.
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13 Ferraz, A.; Saatchi, S.; Mallet, C.; Jacquemoud, S.; Gonçalves,G.; Silva, C.A.; Soares, P.; Tomé, M.; Pereira, L. “Airborne Lidar
Estimation of Aboveground Forest Biomass in the Absenceof Field Inventory.” Remote Sens. (August 2016), 8 at p. 653(https://doi.org/10.3390/rs8080653).

14 Hu, T.; Su, Y.; Xue, B.; Liu, J.; Zhao, X.; Fang, J.; Guo, Q.

“Mapping Global Forest Aboveground Biomass withSpaceborne LiDAR, Optical Imagery, and Forest Inventory
Data.” Remote Sens. (July 2016), 8 at p. 565 (https://doi.
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15 Tang, Hao, John Armston, Steven Hancock, Suzanne Marselis,

Scott Goetz, and Ralph Dubayah. “Characterizing Global
Forest Canopy Cover Distribution Using Spaceborne Lidar.”Remote Sensing of Environment 231 (September 2019) at p.
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16 Merzdorf, Jessica. “Return of Gedi’s First Data Reveals

the Third Dimension of Forests.” NASA's Goddard Space
Flight Center, (April 2019) https://www.nasa.gov/feature/
goddard/2019/return-of-gedi-s-first-data-shows-foreststopography.

17 Fritz, Steffen, Linda See, Juan Carlos Laso Bayas, François

Waldner, Damien Jacques, Inbal Becker-Reshef, Alyssa
Whitcraft, et al. “A Comparison of Global Agricultural
Monitoring Systems and Current Gaps.” Agricultural Systems
168 (January 2019) at p. 258-72 (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.
agsy.2018.05.010).

18 Herold, Martin, Sarah Carter, Valerio Avitabile, Andrés

B. Espejo, Inge Jonckheere, Richard Lucas, Ronald E.
McRoberts, et al. “The Role and Need for Space-Based
Forest Biomass-Related Measurements in Environmental
Management and Policy.” Surveys in Geophysics 40, no.
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article/10.1007/s10712-019-09510-6).

Zhu, Lingli, Juha Suomalainen, Jingbin Liu, Juha Hyyppä, Harri
Kaartinen, and Henrik Haggren. “A Review: Remote Sensing
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Rustam B. Rustamov, December 2017 (https://www.
intechopen.com/books/multi-purposeful-application-ofgeospatial-data/a-review-remote-sensing-sensors).

19 Talukdar, S.; Singha, P.; Mahato, S.; Shahfahad; Pal, S.; Liou,

Agrawal, S. and Khairnar, G. B. “A Comparative Assessmentof Remote Sensing Imaging Techniques: Optical, SAR and
LIDAR.” Int. Arch. Photogramm. Remote Sens. Spatial Inf.
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20 Advanced Research Projects Agency - Energy. “Roots:

10 Sudmanns, Martin, Dirk Tiede, Hannah Augustin, and StefanLang. “Assessing Global Sentinel-2 Coverage Dynamics andData Availability for Operational Earth Observation (Eo)Applications Using the Eo-Compass.” International Journal of
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Y.-A.; Rahman, A. “Land-Use Land-Cover Classification by
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technologies/programs/roots.

21 Orr, Douglas J., Auderlan M. Pereira, Paula da Fonseca

Pereira, Ítalo A. Pereira-Lima, Agustin Zsögön, and Wagner
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22 South, Paul F., Amanda P. Cavanagh, Helen W. Liu, and28 Vaughan, Naomi E., and Clair Gough. “Expert Assessment

23 Kromdijk, Johannes, Katarzyna Głowacka, Lauriebeth

29 Fuss, Sabine, Josep G. Canadell, Glen P. Peters, Massimo

Donald R. Ort. “Synthetic Glycolate Metabolism Pathways
Stimulate Crop Growth and Productivity in the Field.” Science
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24 Salk: Harnessing Plants Initiative. “Harnessing Plants for the

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25 van der Pas, Llewelyn, and Robert A. Ingle. “Towards

an Understanding of the Molecular Basis of Nickel
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“Lignin Engineering in Forest Trees.” [In English]. Frontiersin Plant Science 10, no. 912 (July 2019) (https://doi.
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Relaxation of Photoprotection Impairs Biomass
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BF).

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Concludes Negative Emissions Scenarios May Not
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Minx, Benoit Gabrielle, Etsushi Kato, et al. “Biophysical andEconomic Limits to Negative CO2 Emissions.” Nature Climate
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44

CHAPTER 9:
POLICY
Policy tools are essential for BiCRS to play a meaningfulrole in climate change mitigation. These policies fall into
three broad categories:■ First, incentives for removing carbon from theatmosphere■ Second, support for development and deployment of

BiCRS technologies■ Third, standards for BiCRS projects, including formeasuring life-cycle carbon emissions impacts
This chapter discusses policies that could help BiCRS
become an important contributor to net-zero emission.
Some of these policies are not just helpful but essential
to any significant scale-up of BiCRS.

A. Incentives for Removing Carbon fromthe Atmosphere
Governments play a central role in providing incentives
for carbon removal. Without governments providing
such incentives, few businesses would invest in BiCRS
or other carbon removal projects. While some large
businesses have made initial investments in carbon
removal technologies as part of their voluntarysustainability programs, this is limited in scale.
There are small markets for CO2 removed from theatmosphere, most notably for enhanced oil recovery(EOR)—indeed three U.S. ethanol plants currently
supply CO2 for EOR. There are also small markets forvoluntary CO2 offsets. Neither EOR nor voluntary offsets
provide sufficient demand for BiCRS to scale, and thus
government policies are essential.

programs, governments gradually reduce the numberof permits (often called emissions allowances), thereby
reducing total pollution.
An emissions trading program can easily be designed
to provide incentives for carbon removal. The moststraightforward way is to authorize facilities that remove
carbon from the atmosphere to sell allowances equal
to their removals. That approach provides BiCRS andother carbon removal facilities with a financial reward
for sequestering carbon. (These removals need to bemeasured on a full life-cycle basis—a challenging issue
discussed below.)
Emissions trading programs for CO2 are now in place inthe EU, California, the northeast US, Canada and seven
Chinese provinces, among other places. The Chinese
government is in the process of launching a nationwide
emissions trading program for the power sector.
However, we are not aware of any emissions trading
program that provides credits for carbon removal.1

2. Tax mechanisms
Tax policy can provide incentives for BiCRS and othercarbon removal processes. A carbon tax provides
incentives to reduce emissions to zero, although notbelow zero. However, governments can also provide tax
incentives for carbon removal, such as a tax credit foreach ton of CO2 removed from the atmosphere and thensequestered.
The Section 45Q Carbon Capture Tax Credit in the US
provides a tax credit for each ton of CO2 sequestered,although there is no requirement that the CO2 beremoved from the atmosphere first. (The CO2 cancome from fossil fuel combustion or other sources.)
Nevertheless, Section 45Q has already helped launch

Available tools include emissions trading programs, tax
mechanisms and mandates.

1. Emissions trading programs
Under emissions trading programs, the right to emit
requires a permit. Governments give or sell these
permits to emitters, who may then trade the permits
among themselves. Under many emissions trading

January 2021

45

BiCRS projects associated with ethanol by-product CO2
and saline formation storage in the US. Enacted in 2018,
Section 45Q provides tax credits of $50 per ton for CO2
sequestered in geologic formations and $35 per ton for
CO2 used in products such fuels or cement. To achieve
wider uptake, the statute would require increased
valuation. For carbon removal in a form other than CO2(e.g., bioliquid injection), amendment of 45Q or new
statutes would be required.
Carbon prices are in use in many jurisdictions aroundthe world, including Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, New
Zealand and British Columbia.

3. Mandates
Perhaps the simplest way for governments to provide
incentives for BiCRS is to require it. For example,
government mandates could require bioenergy facilities
to sequester a certain percentage of the CO2 released intheir processes underground or in long-lived products.
Current mandates (e.g., military procurement of biofuels
or the US Renewable Fuel Standard) could require
additional CO2 removal through CCS or another BiCRS
pathway.
Government mandates can be effective in helping
reduce emissions and build markets for clean energy
products. In the US, many state governments requireutilities to purchase a minimum percentage of theirpower from renewable sources. In India, a similar
requirement is imposed by the Ministry of New andRenewable Energy. These requirements have been
important to the early growth of wind and solar powerin both countries.2
Other experiences with government mandates suggest
caution, however. The US federal government has
required the use of cellulosic ethanol in fuel supplies
for more than a decade. Nevertheless, the cellulosic
ethanol industry remains in its infancy. Waivers tothis requirement have been granted on a regularbasis. Technology-forcing requirements—in whichgovernments require private actors to meet standards
that are not yet technically achievable—have beensuccessful in some instances but not in others.3

January 2021

B. Support for Research, Development and
Deployment
1. Research and development
National governments spend roughly $15 billion annually
on R&D for clean energy technologies. These programs
have played important roles in the development ofcountless technologies in recent decades.4
Several recent government R&D programs have targetedbiomass carbon removal and storage technologies.
Europe has launched three major negative emissions
projects that include biomass as part of Horizon 2020:
NEGEM5, led by VTT, looking at biomass-based negativeemissions; LANDMARC, led by Tu Delft, focusing on
remote sensing; and OceanNETS led by Geomar
Helmholtz Center, focusing on oceans. US efforts include
ECOSynBio (Energy and Carbon Optimized Synthesis for
the Bioeconomy), a program of the Advanced Research
Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) at the US Departmentof Energy, which will pioneer a new paradigm forbiosynthesis that prioritizes carbon and natural resource
efficiency during the production of renewable carbonbased fuels, chemicals and products. The International
Energy Agency (IEA) has supported research on BiCRS
value chains, regional opportunities and technology
roadmapping.
In December 2015, heads of state from more than 20
countries announced Mission Innovation, a coalition
dedicated to accelerating clean energy innovation.
Member governments (including Japan, China, the UK,
Germany and Saudi Arabia) pledged to double R&D
on clean energy within five years. The increase in R&D
budgets from these countries in the years ahead offers
an opportunity to increase government R&D funding for
BiCRS.

46

The US helped launch Mission Innovation and remains
a member. Although the US will not fulfill its overall
doubling pledge under the Trump administration, the US
Congress has increased clean energy innovation budgets
by 25% in the past four years, notwithstanding Trumpadministration proposals to cut those budgets.6

2. Deployment
BiCRS facilities are large and capital intensive. Firstof-a-kind BiCRS facilities are unlikely to be able toattract private capital in amounts sufficient for initial
deployment. (This is the classic second “valley of death”
for energy technologies.) Governments play a central
role in supporting deployment of such projects.
Government support for deployment can take several
forms, including the following:a. Tax Incentives. Tax incentives can play an importantrole in spurring deployment of clean energy
technologies. In Norway, for example, generous tax
incentives helped plug-in electric vehicles capture
50% of new car sales in 2018.7 In the US, federal
tax incentives have played an important role inpromoting deployment of solar and wind power.
Tax policy can incentivize BiCRS with credits for eachton of CO2 removed and stored, as noted above. In
addition, tax policy can incentivize deployment of
the technologies required for BiCRS to scale. There
are many possible structures for such tax incentives.
They include the following:i. Investment tax credits. Governments could
provide businesses a tax credit for a percentageof the capital costs incurred in deploying
BiCRS. (This would be similar to the US federal
government’s investment tax credit for solar
power, which has historically provided a tax creditof 30% of the cost of any solar installation in theUS.)ii. Production tax credits. Governments could
provide a tax credit for each ton of carbon
removed from the atmosphere and stored by a
BiCRS facility. (This would be somewhat similar to
the US federal government’s production credit forwind power, which provides a tax credit based on
the kWh of wind power sold at a facility.) Becausesome companies do not have tax liabilities,
governments can provide refundable tax credits
or cash payments in lieu of tax credits underJanuary 2021

these programs. (Section 1603 of the American
Recovery and Reinvestment Act was an example
of such a program.8)
iii. Waiver of sales, value-added taxes or importtaxes. Governments could waive taxes thatwould otherwise be imposed on any products
manufactured at BiCRS facilities. (This would
be similar to Norway’s incentives for electricvehicles, which include waivers of the import andsales taxes that apply to conventional vehicles.)b. Grants. Grants are among the most direct ways
to provide financial support for the low-carbon
transition. Grant programs are widespread in many
countries, often to assist in deployment of first-ofa-kind or early-stage technologies. Governments
could provide grants to help defray the capital costs
associated with building BiCRS facilities.
c. Loan Guarantees. Cutting the cost of debt
capital can help make a project financially viable.
Government loan-guarantee programs seek to
cut costs of debt financing by reducing risk tolenders, resulting in lower borrowing costs. The US
Department of Energy’s loan-guarantee programs
helped launch the utility-scale solar industry in theUS, among other successes. Loan guarantees forthe capital expenditures required for BiCRS facilities
could significantly speed deployment.
d. Revenue Enhancements. For many businesses,
the most valuable incentive is revenue certainty
provided by enhancements. These include contracts
for differences, feed-in tariffs and renewables
certificates. All have been applied to biomass energy
production: the UK Contract for Difference (CfD),9
the German Energiewende on biogas10,11 and therenewable identification numnbers (RINs) system of
the US Renewable Fuel Standard.12 None of theseenhancements has included or considered CO₂
removal and disposal as a qualification to receive
these enhancements nor have enhancements been
designed with BiCRS in mind.
e. Government Procurement. In many countries,
government procurement makes up more than
10% of GDP.13 Government purchases can play animportant role in starting and building new productmarkets. First, government purchase contracts
can provide developers and manufacturers of new
products with an assured market, which can beespecially important in securing debt capital. Second,47

government purchases can help establish standard
technical specifications for new products, which canhelp catalyze efficient supply chains. Governments
could buy products made at BiCRS facilities, such as
biofuels or hydrogen, or purchase the CO₂ itself forunderground storage.

C. Standard-setting
1. The Challenge.
BiCRS projects raise challenging issues with respect tomeasuring, monitoring and crediting carbon removal.
These issues involve a complex interplay of scientific,
technical, socio-economic and institutional factors.
Working through these issues and then incorporating
solutions into government policy—at the subnational,
national and international levels—will be essential for
BiCRS to scale.
The principal objective of a BiCRS project is removing
CO₂ from the atmosphere, and measuring the life-cycle
emissions of a BiCRS project is therefore essential. As
a preliminary matter, emissions from the productionof biomass and shipment of biomass to a BiCRS facility
must be determined. This process is similar to analyzing
the life-cycle emissions of many types of products
and is not conceptually challenging, although reliabledata collection may be difficult or expensive. For BiCRS
projects using biomass feedstocks such as sawmill waste
and agricultural residues, a standard lifecycle assessmentof this kind will be sufficient
BiCRS projects that use some other feedstocks present
greater challenges. Dedicated energy crops and timberraise important issues with respect to land-use changes.
Complications arise because the use of land to growenergy crops or timber for BiCRS projects may lead toclearing of forests—either where the energy crops or
timber are grown (direct land-use change) or in distantplaces (indirect land-use change). This forest clearingor other land-use patterns could increase emissions,
offsetting the benefits associated with the BiCRS project.
Measuring land-use changes requires consideration ofsocio-economic and institutional factors, potentially
including data concerning land-use patterns, crop prices
globally and legal regimes in specific locations. Satellites
are increasingly able to provide regular, high-resolution
information concerning land-use changes, however not
yet with the coverage required in all circumstances.

January 2021

One critical issue is the time frame in which to measurecarbon neutrality. If timber is burned and takes 40 years
to grow back, is that process carbon neutral? Howshould the risk of forest fires or other forest loss during
those 40 years be addressed? (Offset insurance schemes
are one approach to addressing this problem.)14(The EU allows forest bioenergy under its Renewable
Energy Directive only if the carbon is sourced incompliance with sustainability criteria that include forest
protections. These criteria prohibit use of biomass fromany country not party to the Paris Agreement unless“management systems are in place at forest sourcing
area level to ensure that carbon stocks and sinks levels in
the forest are maintained or strengthened over the longterm.”15)
Another issue is possible leakage of CO₂ fromunderground storage. CO₂ can be sequesteredunderground with minimal leakage for centuries;
however, monitoring is required for confidence that a
BiCRS project’s intended benefits are being realized.
Although rules exist to deal with operational liabilities
and post-injection site care in some jurisdictions,additional statutes are needed to define the obligations
and liabilities associated with the unlikely case of CO₂
leakage.16-19
Crediting for carbon removal can create someconceptual challenges, especially when biomass is being
shipped internationally to a BiCRS facility. Which country
should receive the credit for the carbon removal?
Which should be charged for any emissions related toharvesting the feedstock?20, 21
Developing standards in all these areas will be amulti-year process. In several areas, extensive workby scientific and technical experts are required todevelop protocols and methodologies. The next step
will include bottom-up incorporation of these standards
into national legislation, providing an experience baseto allow identification of additional issues and any
problems as they arise. Some topics can be addressed
within the technical and subsidiary bodies of the UN
Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) as
well. The UNFCCC could create a BiCRS platform similar
to its REDD+ Platform22 as a venue for international
dialogue and standard-setting related to BiCRS. This
could provide a foundation for groups of countries toagree on standards for BiCRS processes—in particular
those that involve international trade.
48

2. Global biomass trade today: an example
The global trade in biomass today highlights theimportant role of standard-setting with respect to BiCRS.
Over 22 million tons of wood pellets for electric power
generation and heating were traded internationallyin 2018. The largest consumer was the UK, importing
approximately one third of the market, followed by
Denmark and the Republic of Korea (see Figure 5.1).
These imports are largely driven by national energy
policies designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
For example, the UK Renewable Obligations (RO)policy requires large electric generators to provide
a percentage of their generation from renewables.23
Generation from the combustion of solid biomass, suchas wood pellets, is deemed by the UK government tomeet the sustainability criteria of the scheme.24 As aresult, UK electricity generators (notably the Drax Power
Station) have imported large amounts of wood pellets to
replace coal as a fuel.
The Netherlands offers another notable example. The
Dutch government provided subsidies for the use ofsolid biomass to generate power and heat beginning in
2018, and imports of wood pellets for these purposes
grew six-fold.25) Initially, the use of biomass was deemed
to meet the sustainability criteria for the purposes ofthe subsidy, similar to the UK policy. However, a July
2020 report from a Dutch government advisory board
recommended that this be changed, arguing that
combusting solid biomass for power and heat not be
considered sustainable.26 The Dutch government is
now reconsidering its approach to the classification of
biomass energy production sustainability, and private
actors are reconsidering investment plans.27
In Japan, the government has set a national target ofachieving 3.7-4.6% of total power generation in 2030
from biomass, with the majority of this based on forest
biomass (equivalent to 2.7 to 4.0 GW of biomass-based
generation28). This target is supported with a feed-in
tariff (FiT) subsidy policy, which has led to rapid growthof wood pellet imports for co-firing with coal, primarily
from Canada and Vietnam.29 Japan and South Korea
are estimated to be the largest growth markets forwood pellet imports over the next five years.30 Notably,
the Japanese government is currently reviewing its
sustainability criteria for these biomass sources.31 We
estimate that Japan’s biomass power target will require
140,000,000 tons of wood per year and would create
January 2021

about 250 million tons of CO₂, almost all of which could
be captured in state-of-the-art BiCRS systems.
These examples illustrate the different viewpoints thatnational governments have taken about the extent
to which biomass used for power and heat can beconsidered sustainable, even in the case of identicalbiomass types (commodity solid wood pellets). Whilesome aspects of this diversity of views can be ascribedto remaining uncertainties about the supply chain, theprimary cause is different interpretations of the conceptof sustainability and the time scale over which it shouldbe measured. As a result, there is uncertainty andinternational misalignment about the use of biomass inenergy applications as a sustainability policy.
Unless and until these viewpoints are better harmonized,
nations will disagree on the climate implications andcorrect carbon accounting to use for biomass-basedenergy. This issue is relatively minor today given thesmall scale of this technology. However, if BiCRS is toscale up substantially, this issue will need to be resolved,
with all nations coming to a common understanding of
how to interpret the true climate impacts.
1

Burke, Josh. “Negative Emissions under a Net Zero Target:
Navigating the Controversies and Pitfalls.” The London
School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) and
Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and theEnvironment, (February 2020) https://www.lse.ac.uk/
GranthamInstitute/news/negative-emissions-under-a-netzero-target-navigating-the-controversies-and-pitfalls/.

2

Kenning, Tom. “Intersolar India: Revision to ‘Single Most
Important Policy’ to Drive Solar Ready for Approval.”
PV-Tech, (November 2015) https://www.pv-tech.org/news/
intersolar-india-revision-to-single-most-important-policy-todrive-solar-re.

3

Gerard, David, and Lester B. Lave. “Implementing
Technology-Forcing Policies: The 1970 Clean Air Act
Amendments and the Introduction of Advanced Automotive
Emissions Controls in the United States.” Technological
Forecasting and Social Change 72, no. 7 (September 2005) at
p. 761-78 (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.techfore.2004.08.003).

4

Mission Innovation. “Tracking Progress.” (Accessed
September 2020) http://mission-innovation.net/our-work/baseline-and-doubling-plans/.

5

NEGEM. “Negative Emissions Technologies and Practices- NETPs.” (Accessed September 2020) https://www.
negemproject.eu.

6

Varun Sivaram, David Hart, Colin Cunliff, Julio Friedmann
and David Sandalow, Energizing America, Columbia Centeron Global Energy Policy (September 2020) -- https://www.
energypolicy.columbia.edu/energizing-america

49

7

Rathi, Akshat. “Half of All Cars Sold in Norway in 2018 Were
Electric.” Quartz, (January 2019) https://qz.com/1514111/
half-of-all-cars-sold-in-norway-in-2018-were-electric/.

8

Obey, David R. [Rep. D-WI-7] (Sponsor) ( House- Appropriations; Budget). “American Recovery andReinvestment Act of 2009.” In Pubic Law No. 111-5, Passedby the 111th Congress of the United States, 2009 (https://www.congress.gov/bill/111th-congress/house-bill/1/text).

9

BEiS. “Contract for Difference, Policy Paper.” (March 2020)
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/contracts-fordifference/contract-for-difference.

10 Hauser, Eva, and Bernhard Wern. “The Role of Bioenergy

in the German “Energiewende”—Whose Demands Can Be
Satisfied by Bioenergy?” Energy, Sustainability and Society
6, no. 1 (December 2016) at p. 35 (https://doi.org/10.1186/
s13705-016-0101-0).

11 Appunn K. “Bioenergy - the troubled pillar of theEnergiewende.” Clean Energy Wire, (Sept 2016), https://www.cleanenergywire.org/dossiers/bioenergy-germany.

12 EPA, 2017, “Renewable Identification Numbers (RINs) under

the Renewable Fuel Standard Program,” (https://www.
epa.gov/renewable-fuel-standard-program/renewableidentification-numbers-rins-under-renewable-fuel-standard).

13 Ortiz-Ospina, Esteban and Max Roser, “Government

Spending.” Published online at OurWorldInData.org, (2016)(https://ourworldindata.org/public-spending/).

14 Brook J. Detterman and Kirsten K. Gruver. “Wildfires

Burn Carbon Offsets.” (September 2020), https://www.
natlawreview.com/article/wildfires-burn-carbon-offsets.

15 EUR-Lex: Access to European Union Law. “Directive (Eu)2018/2001 of the European Parliament and of the Councilof 11 December 2018 on the Promotion of the Use ofEnergy from Renewable Sources (Text with Eea Relevance).”(Accessed September 2020) https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legalcontent/EN/TXT/?uri=uriserv:OJ.L_.2018.328.01.0082.01.
ENG&toc=OJ:L:2018:328:TOC.

16 Pop, Anda. “The EU Legal Liability Framework for Carbon

Capture and Storage: Managing the Risk of Leakage While
Encouraging Investment.” ASLR, v.6, (December 2015)(https://www.abdn.ac.uk/law/documents/ASLR_Vol6_
Dec15_32-56_Pop.pdf).

17 Global CCS Institute (GCCSI). “Lessons and Perceptions:

Adopting a commercial approach to CCS liability,”
Global CCS Institute Report (2019) https://www.
globalccsinstitute.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/
Adopting-a-Commercial-Appraoch-to-CCS-Liability_ThoughtLeadership_August-2019.pdf

18 Havercroft, Ian, and Richard Macrory. “Legal Liability andCarbon Capture and Storage: A Comparative Perspective.”
Global CCS Institute (GCCSI), (October 2014) (https://www.
globalccsinstitute.com/archive/hub/publications/179798/
legal-liability-carbon-capture-storage-comparativeperspective.pdf).

19 Michael Faure, “Liability and Compensation for Damage

Resulting from CO2 Storage Sites.” William & Mary

January 2021

Environmental Law and Policy Review. 40(2) at p. 387(February 2016), https://scholarship.law.wm.edu/wmelpr/
vol40/iss2/3.
20 Yassa, Sami. “Chatham House Study Debunks Biomass

Carbon Neutrality.” NRDC, (February 2017) https://www.
nrdc.org/experts/sami-yassa/chatham-house-studydebunks-biomass-carbon-neutrality.

21 Ravilious, Kate. “Biomass Energy: Green or Dirty?” Physics

World, (January 2020 ) https://physicsworld.com/a/biomassenergy-green-or-dirty/.

22 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate

Change. “Redd+ Web Platform: Reducing Emissions from
Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing
Countries.” (Accessed September 2020) https://redd.unfccc.
int/.

23 Ofgem. “About the RO.” (Accessed September 2020) https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/environmental-programmes/ro/aboutro.

24 Ofgem. “Renewables Obligation: Sustainability Criteria.”(April 2018) https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/publications-andupdates/renewables-obligation-sustainability-criteria.

25 USDA Foreign Agricultural Service (FAS). “Dutch Wood

Pellet Imports Surge to a New Record in 2019.” Report.
May 2020 (https://apps.fas.usda.gov/newgainapi/api/
Report/DownloadReportByFileName?fileName=Dutch%20
Wood%20Pellet%20Imports%20Surge%20to%20
a%20New%20Record%20in%202019_The%20Hague_
Netherlands_05-16-2020).

26 Janssen, Davine. “The Dutch Have Decided: Burning Biomass

Is Not Sustainable.” Euractiv, (July 2020) https://www.
euractiv.com/section/energy/news/the-dutch-have-decidedburning-biomass-is-not-sustainable/.

27 Vattenfall. “Vattenfall Opnieuw Met Betrokkenen Om Tafelover Biomassacentrale Diemen.” (June 2020) (https://group.
vattenfall.com/nl/newsroom/actueel/persbericht/2020/
vattenfall-opnieuw-met-betrokkenen-om-tafel-overbiomassacentrale-diemen).

28 Kimura, K., and Y. Ninomiya. “Wood Biomass Power

Generation Target for 2030: Impact on Biomass Fuel Supply
in Japan.” IEEJ (February 2017) (https://eneken.ieej.or.jp/
data/7194.pdf).

29 Bossler, Annette. “Sailing into Japan: Wood Pellet Demandin a Changing Energy Market.” Biomass Magazine, (January2020) http://biomassmagazine.com/articles/16733/
sailing-into-japan-wood-pellet-demand-in-a-changingenergy-market.

30 Strauss, William. “Japan’s Use of Biomass for Power.” Wood

Pellet Association of Canada (www.pellet.org), (September2019) https://www.pellet.org/wpac-agm/images/2019/Japans_Use_of_Biomass_for_Power_.pdf.

31 Levinson, Rachael. “The Growing Importance of Pks in theJapanese Biomass Market.” Biomass Magazine, (January2020) http://biomassmagazine.com/articles/16690/
the-growing-importance-of-pks-in-the-japanese-biomassmarket.

50CHAPTER 10:

FINDINGS AND
RECOMMENDATIONSFINDINGS
Finding 1: Using biomass, several gigatons of CO2
could be removed from the atmosphere and stored
underground or in long-lived products each year.

Existing analyses suggest 2.5-5.0 GtCO2/y of global
potential by midcentury without environmental damage
or negative impacts on food security. This estimate isbased on currently available waste biomass, working
land, infrastructure, and agricultural and forestry
technologies. With innovations in biomass conversion,technology-enabled biomass tracking, and agriculturaland forestry practices, this figure could be even larger.
Finding 2: Energy production is not the only way
that biomass can be used in combination with carbon
capture to store CO2 underground or in long-lived
products.

Bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) has
received considerable attention in the climate change
literature. But other ways to use biomass to sequester
CO2 for the long-term are emerging. They include longlived products (e.g., biochar), biomass conversion anddisposal (e.g., biomass to bioliquids followed by deep
geological injection), and direct transfer of biomass far
away from atmospheric reach (e.g., deep-ocean disposalof macroalgae).
Finding 3: Governance and accounting issues are
key challenges to BiCRS and may set its practicallimits.

BiCRS approaches that do not use waste feedstocks
share many of the same challenges facing nature-based
approaches to carbon removal, including leakage,
additionality, double-counting and permanence.
Widely-accepted standards do not exist, and significant
governance and accounting issues must be addressed
for widespread acceptance and adoption.

January 2021

Finding 4: The carbon removal value of biomass may
increasingly exceed its energy value.

Biomass has low energy density. In contrast, biomass iseffective at harvesting CO2 from the air and convertingthat CO2 into a form that is readily transported andstored. In a carbon-constrained world, the ability ofbiomass to harvest atmospheric carbon has a value that
may exceed the value of net energy production. Biomass
used in processes that sequester carbon should beviewed as valuable for this “carbon service,” as well as
for any energy services it provides.
Finding 5: Many technologies and practices requiredfor BiCRS are already mature.

Key technology elements in BiCRS processes include
drying, pelletizing, gasification, anaerobic digestion,
biomass boilers, CO2 capture and separation, andgeological storage monitoring. Key practices include
sustainable harvesting, biomass transportation andhybrid culture development. These mature technologies
and practices are commercially available at scale today
in global supply chains. Specific improvements (e.g.,conversion efficiency, waste handling, capital cost
reductions) are likely with modest investments andadditional commercial practice.
Finding 6: A few key technologies and practices
require deliberate focus to speed development andprovide insight into BiCRS governance and scale-up.

Some technologies with the potential to play importantroles in BiCRS require further development. These
include biomass to hydrogen conversion, modular fastpyrolysis, forest and farm monitoring and accounting(a combination of sensors, artificial intelligence andremote sensing), and genetic modification of common
crops to enhance carbon uptake and durability. These
technologies should be the focus of innovation policy, as
part of a strategy to develop and deploy BiCRS systems
in key markets. In addition, new pathways not linked toenergy production (e.g., bioliquid deep injection andmacroalgae deep marine disposal) are in early stages
but appear promising in terms of cost, scalability andtechnical viability.

51

Finding 7: Without proper governance and standards,
BiCRS could be counterproductive with respect toclimate mitigation, biodiversity conservation, foodsecurity and rural livelihoods.

Experience demonstrates that biomass cultivation,
harvesting and trade can lead to ecosystem damage andpoor outcomes of many kinds. Risks include permanent
loss of biodiversity; damage to forests, soils andwetlands; reduction in agricultural yields; food security
threats from elevated prices and loss of local foodcultivation; leakage and displacement of agricultural andsilvicultural production with associated carbon leakage;and marine ecosystem impacts. As BiCRS pathways
grow and scale, care is required to monitor for pooroutcomes, apply international standards and law, andshield vulnerable ecosystems from unsustainable andclimate destructive practices.

RECOMMENDATIONS
Recommendation 1:
We introduce a new term—biomass carbon removal andstorage (BiCRS). We recommend adoption of this term
and the approach it reflects in considering the potential
role of biomass in achieving net-zero global greenhousegas emissions. The BiCRS framework focuses on thevalue of biomass for carbon removal and long-term
storage underground or in long-lived products. It calls for
projects that do no damage to—and ideally promote—food security, rural livelihoods, biodiversity conservationand other important values.

Recommendation 2:
We recommend that development of BiCRS technologies
and projects focus first on waste biomass. Municipal
solid waste, agricultural waste, forest waste andsewage are rich in carbon that recently came from theatmosphere. These resources are widely available andcan support initial deployments of BiCRS while issues ofappropriate and monitorable biomass production are
addressed.

January 2021

Recommendation 3:
We recommend a framework in which BiCRS projects
start with the guiding principle “Do no harm.” Biomass
removal and storage can create risks related to foodsecurity, biodiversity loss, eco-colonialism and otherissues. Projects should only be pursued after applying aprecautionary principle, addressing any such risks andseeking co-benefits in these areas along with carbon
removal from the atmosphere.

Recommendation 4:
We recommend an innovation roadmap for BiCRS,
focusing on hydrogen, fast pyrolysis and selected nonenergy pathways. The specifics of the roadmap, detailed
above, include rapid development of large-pilots anddemonstrations across both technology and practice.
Since the BiCRS framework allows for transport ofbiomass, CO2 or finished goods, geological storage
assessment should be a formal part of technology
development, especially in key biomass-producing and-exporting nations. Moreover, some pathways with
substantial potential have received little support to date.
We recommend R&D investments in areas including
direct conversion of wet biomass, salty biomass
feedstocks and conversion; new and advanced drying
systems; and other “balance of facility” pathways toimproved efficiency and cost reduction.

Recommendation 5:
We recommend a targeted effort to develop monitoring,
reporting and verification (MRV) for BiCRS. Rapid
technology changes regarding our ability to monitor andquantify biomass carbon accumulations hold enormous
promise. Although the core aspects of biomass
quantification are scientifically sound and reasonably
understood, many critical topics require study anddevelopment. These topics include soil carbon fluxes,
robust life-cycle accounting, macroeconomic leakage
and ecosystem benefits. We propose a decade-long,
focused effort by a set of nations to help clarify theseissues and a new institutional role to gather and sharescientific and commercial data of high relevance.

52

Recommendation 6:
We recommend a set of nations and companies leaddevelopment of the frameworks, methodologies andstandards that must underlie gigaton-scale BiCRS as anindustry. A subset of producing nations (including Brazil,
the US, Indonesia, Malaysia and some African nations)
together with consuming nations (the UK, the EU, Japan,
Korea and the US) could help provide enough clarity inthe years ahead. Locally sourced and converted biomass(including wastes and byproduct biomass) could lay
the foundation for commercial standards for MRV andJanuary 2021

CO2 disposal. We recommend leading companies andnon-governmental institutions (e.g., IEA) launch a set of
discussions and convenings, perhaps as part of the Clean
Energy Ministerial or alongside the G20 meetings. The
UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)
could launch a BiCRS Platform modeled after its REDD+
Platform as a global venue for this dialogue. Since
standards for practice, accounting and sustainability
will ultimately serve companies over the long-term, werecommend companies participate actively in these
discussions (as some have already).

53