Inefficient power generation as an optimal route to negative emissions via BECCS?
Open accessAbstract
Current ambitions to limit climate change to no more than 1.5 °C–2 °C by the end of the 21st century rely heavily on the availability of negative emissions technologies (NETs)—bioenergy with CO 2 capture and storage (BECCS) and direct air capture in particular. In this context, these NETs are providing a specific service by removing CO 2 from the atmosphere, and therefore investors would expect an appropriate risk-adjusted rate of return, varying as a function of the quantity of public money involved. Uniquely, BECCS facilities have the possibility to generate both low carbon power and remove CO 2 from the atmosphere, but in an energy system characterised by high penetration of intermittent renewable energy such as wind and solar power plants, the dispatch load factor of such BECCS facilities may be small relative to their capacity. This has the potential to significantly under utilise these assets for their primary purpose of removing CO 2 from the atmosphere. In this study, we present a techno-economic environmental evaluation of BECCS plants with a range of operating efficiencies, considering their full- and part-load operation relative to a national-scale annual CO 2 removal target. We find that in all cases, a lower capital cost, lower efficiency BECCS plant is superior to a higher cost, higher efficiency facility from both environmental and economic perspectives. We show that it may be preferable to operate the BECCS facility in base-load fashion, constantly removing CO 2 from the atmosphere and dispatching electricity on an as-needed basis. We show that the use of this 'spare capacity' to produce hydrogen for, e.g . injection to a natural gas system for the provision of low carbon heating can add to the overall environmental and economic benefit of such a system. The only point where this hypothesis appears to break down is where the CO 2 emissions associated with the biomass supply chain are sufficiently large so as to eliminate the service of CO 2 removal.
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The dispatch load factor of a BECCS system is likely to be low in an energy system based on renewable energy characterized by frequent surplus electricity.
“The dispatch load factor of a BECCS system is likely to be low in an energy system based on renewable energy 74 that is characterized by frequent surplus electricity (e.g., excess solar power at noon).”
From The mutual dependence of negative emission technologies and energy systems (2019) · cites this paper as [74]
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References 30 · Cited by 65
Research works printed but not linked: 2
- IPCC 2014 Climate change 2014: mitigation of climate change Contribution of Working Group III to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change ed O Edenhofer et al (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press)
- Seifkar N, Lu X, Withers M, Malina R, Field R, Barrett S and Herzog H 2015 Biomass to liquid fuels pathways: A techno-economic environmental evaluation Tech. rep. (MIT Energy Initiative, Cambridge, MA)
- Authors
- Mac Dowell, N., & Fajardy, M.
- Affiliations
- Imperial College London (GB)
- ORCID
- Fajardy, Mathilde
- Venue
- Environmental Research Letters
- Publisher
- IOP Publishing
- Published
- 2017-04-01
- Volume
- 12
- Issue
- 4
- Pages
- 045004
- ISSN
- 1748-9326 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W2602313433
- Cited by
- 65
- References
- 30
- Citations by year
- 2026: 2 · 2025: 4 · 2024: 5 · 2023: 6 · 2022: 9 · 2021: 9 · 2020: 6 · 2019: 13 · 2018: 8 · 2017: 3
- FWCI
- 6.38
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- Environmental Research Letters (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion)
- Spiral (Imperial College London) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- Funders
- EPSRC (EP/M001369/1, EP/M015351/1)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Engineering › Mechanical Engineering › Carbon Dioxide Capture Technologies
- Physical Sciences › Energy › Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment › Renewable energy and sustainable power systems
- Physical Sciences › Energy › Energy Engineering and Power Technology › Hybrid Renewable Energy Systems
- Keywords
- bioenergy with carbon capture and storage, negative emissions technologies, off-design operation, base load operation, carbon dioxide removal, renewable energy intermittency, hydrogen production, low-carbon heating, techno-economic analysis, climate change mitigation
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