Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS) as an approach to achieve negative emissions in Europe

Abstract

Since the emergence of industrial development, atmospheric CO2 concentrations have drastically increased from 280 PPM to 400 PPM nowadays. BECCS is one of the Negative Emissions Technologies that has prospects to substantially remove CO2 from the atmosphere and aid in meeting the Paris agreement. This thesis explored the techno-economic feasibility of integrating CCS with biogenic emissions generated at ethanol and upgrading biogas (UBG) plants in the European Union. The techno-economic feasibility is evaluated using a Marginal Abatement Cost Curve (MACC) to estimate the cost of the potential amount of biogenic CO2 that can be abated (€/tonne CO2_bio abated). The gross total biogenic emissions from 22 ethanol plants’ potential for storage is estimated at around 2.72 Mt per year; and an annual of 236 kt from 12 UBG plants in Germany. Considering the projects` lifetime of 20 years, a gross total of 60 Mt could be potentially sequestered underground. Considering CO2 transportation by trucks and using Depleted oil and Gas Fields (DOGF) as a storage point, most cases have an abatement cost of or less than 100 €/tonne). These cases could abate a gross of 2.6 Mt annually with an average 7price of 77 €/tonne. While if pipelines are considered, nine out of ten cases could abate a gross 1.9 Mt annually for a 44 €/tonne. The abatement costs will be the minimum if reused DOGF storage sites are used, while these costs would be at the maximum with saline aquifers, regardless of the transportation type. If ETS would be adapted to include BECCS, implementing CCS with ethanol and biogas plants could become a more favorable pathway to achieve negative emissions. With the current rise of carbon prices in the market, most of the pipeline cases examined would have reached breakeven costs soon. In contrast, with road transportation, an average carbon price of around 80 to 90 €/tonne would be needed for all of the cases to reach breakeven levels. Overall, transportation by pipelines is only possible for plants with an annual capacity larger than 100 kt approximately; however, both trucks and pipelines deliver identical amounts of net emissions. This research shows that CCS integration with ethanol and UBG plants is a cheap pathway of BECCS compared to what is already estimated by the literature, especially by IPCC, 2018. Furthermore, the inclusion of BECCS under the ETS system could assist the EU to reach its targets by 2050.