The Netherlands' Potential to Use Negative Emissions Created by BECCS Until 2050

Abstract

Due to the posing threats of climate change and the newly formed Paris agreement, carbon mitigation becomes more and more important. BECCS, which is the application of CCS on the production of bioenergy resulting in negative emissions due to the carbon uptake of biomass, is one such technology. Additional advantages of BECCS is that carbon roof overshoot can take place and that BECCS allows for low amounts of fossil fuel use in a net zero carbon society. The aim of this research is to discover how many negative emissions the Netherlands is able to achieve between 2015 and 2050. Three different scenarios have been developed for this. The scenarios differ in the amount of biomass available to produce bioenergy. One scenario assumes only biomass input from the Netherlands, the second scenario assumes that the global biomass supply is equally divided per person, and the last scenario assumes that the Netherlands becomes an expert in handling biomass for bioenergy production purposes. The results of this research shows that the Netherlands can achieve annual negative emissions between 2.8 and 24.0 megatons of negative CO2 emissions in 2050, depending on the scenario. The cumulative amount of negative emissions equates to 102.3 – 556.7 megatons CO2. This allows the Netherlands to delay the implementation of other carbon neutral energy conversion technologies with 0.5 to 2.9 years while still achieving the same net carbon emission savings. However, this study was performed with a base year of 2015. We are currently almost in the year 2018. This means that if we wish to benefit as much as possible from BECCS, implementation must start rapidly. Regardless of the starting point, the results of this research show the significance that BECCS can play in mitigating carbon emissions in the Netherlands. It’s a technology that should not be ignored.