Biomass and carbon dioxide capture and storage: A review

This paper provides an overview of biomass with carbon capture and storage (Bio-CCS or BECCS) at the systems level. It summarises the relevant information from the recent 5th Assessment Report (AR5) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), describes the progress made since earlier reports and considers additional results recently published in literature. The focus is hereby not on the technical challenges but rather on the surrounding sustainability issues. Bio-CCS shows significant potential to achieve net CO2 removal from the atmosphere at a cost that is comparable to conventional CCS technologies. However, uncertainties remain due to the little experience with large-scale Bio-CCS demonstration plants, gaps in climate policies and accounting frameworks, missing financial instruments, unclear public acceptance and complex sustainability issues. A major conclusion is that the deployment of Bio-CCS cannot take place in isolation, thus will require an approach addressing the inextricable links within the food-water-energy-climate nexus. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.