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Rachel Smolker

3rd December 2015


The real solutions will not generate 'renewable energy' or marketable products. They do not rely on shiny new technofixes or pretend to 'recycle' pollution. Nor are they amenable to monetization, corruption, or corporate monopoly.



In fact, most (101 of 116 models they reviewed to achieve 430-480 PPM stabilization) incorporated some sort of 'negative emissions' technological fix (Fuss et al., 2014).

The terminology of 'negative emissions' has now entered the jargon in climate negotiations currently underway in Paris. Yet such a technology is currently nonexistent. The only approach to sucking CO2 out of the atmosphere mentioned by the IPCC as "near term available" is bioenergy with carbon capture and storage, commonly referred to as BECCS - Bio-Energy with Carbon Capture and Sequestration.


IPCC acknowledges that there are risks and uncertainties associated with large scale BECCS. But, while IPCC has remained scientifically rigorous in their assessments of the state of our climate (chapter one of the report), when it comes to assessing 'mitigation' options (chapter three), scientific rigor appears to have fallen by the wayside in favor of economic wishful thinking.

The reality of BECCS

The fact is that no matter how costly or difficult it may be economically and no matter how difficult to make the models 'work' to lay out a path to climate stabilization, embracing fantasy technofixes is a losing strategy. We already know that for both technical and economic reasons, BECCS can never achieve 'negative emissions'.



The Decatur project is a proof of concept project for underground storage of CO2. However, its developers never claimed to provide 'negative emissions' nor even to be 'carbon neutral'. A few others sell the captured fermentation CO2 for industrial applications including soft drinks and enhanced oil recovery (see below).


Hence they subsidize it alongside wind and solar, even though the CO2 emissions are generally much higher even than for coal per unit of energy generated. The notion that those emissions will be offset by regrowth of the trees and crops that are used has been refuted over and over again, yet still is not reflected in policies. Yet, if the process is not 'carbon neutral' in the first place, it can never be rendered 'negative' by carbon capture.

We also know full well by now that the demand for 'biomass' and the associated land, water, fertilizers use etc. would be hugely destructive on a variety of fronts beyond greenhouse gas emissions - affecting food production, water, human rights and biodiversity. This is clear already at the current scale of bioenergy production.

BECCS and 'clean coal'

BECCS is the bioenergy twin of 'clean coal', the carbon capture (CCS) technology that has been touted for years by the coal industry. So how has that worked out?

Carbon capture from fossil fuel processes, as from bioenergy, is expensive and energy intensive. Most attempts - almost all involving coal and natural gas, have encountered a multitude of technical problems and massive cost overruns. They have failed to operate efficiently if at all.

FutureGen, a demonstration 'clean coal' plant, was intended to be a US showcase example of CCS technology. Somewhere around 200 million dollars of pubic funding were spent prior to cancellation in 2013. It was canceled in part because private investors wouldn't chip in. They didn't consider it viable, presumably because the technical and economic challenges were simply too great.

Another CCS 'clean coal' project is in progress in Kemper, Mississippi. The facility will use lignite coal strip mined from an adjacent area of around 48 square miles. Costs were initially estimated at $1.8 billion but have so far ballooned to an astounding $6.17 billion.

Even then, the facility is required only to 'try' to capture CO2. If they fail, they won't be held responsible. If they succeed, they have contracted to sell the CO2 for enhanced oil recovery. The project is nevertheless still presented as 'good for the climate'.


"have not only shed light on the technical and financial problems with the plant but the political deception that has gone with it ... A little over a year later, the hype about the purported environmental benefits and affordability of the Boundary Dam CCS plant have gone up in a puff of green smoke."

CCS has been held up as the promise behind 'clean coal' for decades. Yet a few weeks ago, after 22 years of lobbying for so-called 'clean coal' and failing to produce a single speck of it, the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity announced that they will scale back their lobbying efforts.

In 'Carbon capture: Miracle machine or white elephant', the Financial Times noted "Few technologies have had so much money thrown at them for so many years by so many governments and companies, with such feeble results."

Was it ever anything more than a useful fuction?



Where carbon capture has been implemented (primarily in natural gas refinery operations), the costs are offset in part by selling the CO2 for 'enhanced oil recovery', that is: pumping compressed CO2 into depleted oil wells which forces more oil to the surface. But this is neither considered 'sequestration' nor is it climate friendly. Quite the reverse.

Still, governments continue to dole out the cash for CCS projects. Doing so is viewed, politically, as 'taking action' to reduce emissions. Energy companies on the other hand, have not invested significantly into BECCS or CCS. Governments, that is, we the taxpayers, are instead footing the bill for this endless nonsense.

None of this bodes well for a miraculous, rapid and effective scaling up of BECCS as climate savior. Just recently, DRAX, one of UK's largest power companies, announced that they were abandoning their 'White Rose' BECCS project.


Now, as the Paris climate negotiations are just beginning, the UK announced they will altogether drop their promised 'pioneering' funding competition for CCS.

Now what? Ah yes: 'CO2 recycling'




As the Paris climate negotiations are under way, we bear witness the latest fad: 'CO2 recycling'. Instead of putting serious attention to addressing the roots of the problem, we are encouraged to embrace an entrepreneurial and stylishly clever mindset that CO2 is no longer a 'problem' but should instead be viewed as a valuable commodity! Why not make stuff from CO2 and sell it? We can profit from our own pollution!

Recently, 'XPrize' announced a collaboration with the American energy company, NRG and the oil sands innovation alliance (Cosia) to provide a $20 million bounty for development of a technology capable of making something of value from CO2 removed from the atmosphere.

But, recall the famous 3R's of waste management? Reduce, Reuse and Recycle. We learned that reuse and recycle only slightly postpone the approach into landfills: a blink of the eye in the lifetime of a plastic.


A fairy tale with no happy ending


Now we have the fossil fuel industry, XPrize backers representing some of the most atrociously polluting industries, and even some well intentioned people who genuinely, if naively, wish for a technofix to 'solve the climate problem' demanding that we spin gold out of CO2 emissions if we want our children to have a decent future.



Those real solutions will not generate 'renewable energy' or marketable products and therefore are not technically 'negative emissions'. They do not rely on shiny new technofixes or pretend to 'recycle' pollution. Importantly, they are not so amenable to monetization, corruption, or corporate monopolization.

Hence they are rarely given more than lip service, and when they are, it is in the context of bringing them into the market, and providing offsets for polluters as in the case with forests and 'reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation' (REDD) and 'Climate Smart Agriculture'.




Rachel Smolker is Co-Director of Biofuelwatch.

Report: 'Last-ditch option or wishful thinking? Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage' is by Biofuelwatch.


Fuss et al. (2014) Betting on negative emissions. Nature Climate Change 4: 850-853.

This article was originally published on Independent Science News.


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