Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage

Bioenergy with carbon capture and storage, or BECCS, is the process of extracting bioenergy from biomass while capturing and storing the carbon dioxide that the process produces. Greenhouse gas emissions from bioenergy can be low because when vegetation is harvested for bioenergy, new vegetation can grow in its place and absorb carbon dioxide from the air through photosynthesis; after biomass is harvested, energy is extracted from it in useful forms such as electricity, heat or biofuels through combustion, fermentation, pyrolysis or other conversion methods, and using that bioenergy releases carbon dioxide. In BECCS, some of that carbon dioxide is captured before it enters the atmosphere and stored underground using carbon capture and storage technology, and under some conditions BECCS can remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere on net. Its potential range of negative emissions has been estimated at zero to 22 gigatonnes per year, and wide deployment is constrained by the cost and availability of biomass; because biomass production is land-intensive, deploying BECCS at scale can pose risks to food production, human rights and biodiversity.