This Week in Carbon Dioxide Removal: Three Take-Aways

Week 4 Edition

Professor Wil Burns, Environmental Policy & Culture Program, Northwestern University

Story 1: The Facts About Drax

Drax Group bills itself as “the world’s leading sustainable biomass generation and supply business.” It recently tendered a development consent application to the UK government to construct two bioenergy and carbon capture with storage (BECCS) units at the Drax Power Station in North Yorkshire. The facility could permanently remove 8 million tons of carbon dioxide a year from 2030, with the captured CO2 transported by pipeline to a geological storage site under the North Sea. The facility would constitute the largest carbon capture facility in the world.

However, an analysis released this week in Engineering and Technology sounds some warning bells in terms of the energy security implications of the project. Drax’s own figures project that the North Yorkshire BECCS units’ net electricity capacity will be reduced from 1,302MWe to 931Mwe, constituting a whopping 28 per cent decrease in energy output in comparison to pre-carbon capture figures. This is due to the high energy needs associated with carbon capture, with the “energy penalty” running to 31% in a coal-fired power plant in Saskatchewan using CCS (Boundary Dam). As the piece suggests, this project could exacerbate the energy crisis in the UK, as the nation potentially faces rolling blackouts this winter. Drax counters that BECCS can both help effectuate the UK’s goals of decarbonization and bolster energy security.

Story 2: The Potential Wedding of CDR with Renewable Energy

A new study in the journal IEEE Access sets forth a history of efforts to transition to 100% renewable energy systems, as well as the future of this initiative, including institutional constraints. One component of the study is a discussion of the potential role of carbon dioxide removal in what the authors portray as “a holistic vision of the transition towards a net-negative greenhouse gas emissions economy that can limit global warming to 1.5°C . . .” The acknowledgment of the importance of integrating CDR with renewable energy is especially striking since one of the co-authors is Stanford University Professor Mark Jacobson, an often vocal critic of the need for deployment of CDR.

Among the key findings of the study in the context of CDR are the following:

• Models that connect CDR to 100% renewable energy scenarios are “incredibly rare;”
• More “ambitious” climate targets are likely needed in acknowledgment of the fact that several climate “tipping points,” including thawing of permafrost, melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet, and coral reef dieback may transpire with existing targets of 1.5°–2C°. This may necessitate seeking to hold temperature increases to around 1.0°C, or even below, and atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide in a range of 280–350ppm. This necessarily requires consideration of the potential role of CDR to effectuate such goals, in conjunction with a 100% renewable energy scenario;
• Nature-based climate solutions and industrial approaches, such as direct air capture, “must be part of any net-negative CO2 emission pathway discussion, which is an obligatory discussion for any development beyond 2050 if the ambitious target of the Paris Agreement of 1.5°C is to be taken seriously;”
• Achieving “climate safety” by seeking to hold temperatures to 1°C leads to an expansion of the 100% renewable energy scenarios to include net-negative CO2 emissions in the second half of the century;
• There is an urgent need to formulate a conception of CDR portfolios and the technological and environmental limitations of CDR options.

Story 3: Climate policy for a net-zero future: ten recommendations for Direct Air Capture

A new paper by Benjamin Sovacool et al. draws upon a set of expert interviews to proffers ten recommendations for optimal deployment of direct air capture. These include the following:

• Follow key principles for ensuring ‘negative’ emissions, including an emphasis on permanence, integrity in monitoring, reporting and verification;
• Prioritize long-term storage of carbon; this should counsel against more evanescent storage of carbon that might occur via utilization, e.g. enhanced oil recovery or in chemicals;
• Appreciate scale and incentivize experimentation, including an emphasis on larger scale demonstration projects;
• Co-develop with point-source capture, transport, and storage;
• Phase in a carbon price and sustained governmental support. This includes establishing an adequate price on carbon to drive adoption or direct state investment;
• Couple with renewables, including early piloting with surplus renewables
• Harness hub deployment, including the development of a “hubs and spokes” approach, with large storage serving as the hub and spokes transiting carbon to such facilities;
• Maintain separate targets for emissions and removals to avoid the specter of a moral hazard or mitigation deterrence;
• Embrace certification and compliance. “Certification should be sufficiently granular to differentiate on the source of CO2 and the degree of permanence of storage.”
• Recognize issues of social acceptance, legitimacy, and justice. This includes public and regulatory engagement that comport with principles of just transition and devolved powers to enhance legitimacy.