Imperial College London
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Professor Niall Mac Dowell FIChemE FRSC

Faculty of Natural Sciences, Centre for Environmental Policy

Professor of Future Energy Systems
 
 
 
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Contact

 

+44 (0)20 7594 9298niall Website

 
 
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Location

 

16 Prince's GardensSouth Kensington Campus

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Summary

 

Publications

Citation

BibTex format

@article{Fajardy:2017:10.1039/C7EE00465F,
author = {Fajardy, M and Mac, Dowell N},
doi = {10.1039/C7EE00465F},
journal = {Energy & Environmental Science},
pages = {1389--1426},
title = {Can BECCS deliver sustainable and resource efficient negative emissions?},
url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1039/C7EE00465F},
volume = {10},
year = {2017}
}
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RIS format (EndNote, RefMan)

TY  - JOUR
AB  - Negative emissions technologies (NETs) in general and Bioenergy with CO2 Capture and Storage(BECCS) in particular are commonly regarded as vital yet controversial to meeting our climategoals. In this contribution we present a whole-systems analysis of the BECCS value chain associatedwith the cultivation, harvesting, transport and conversion in dedicated biomass powerstations in conjunction with CCS, of a range of biomass resources – both dedicated energy crops(miscanthus, switchgrass, short rotation coppice willow), and agricultural residues (wheat straw).We explicitly consider the implications of sourcing the biomass from different regions, climatesand land types. The water, carbon and energy footprints of each value chain were calculated,and their impact on the overall system water, carbon and power efficiencies were evaluated. Anextensive literature review was performed and a statistical analysis of the available data is presented.In order to describe the dynamic greenhouse gas balance of such as system, a yearlyaccounting of the emissions was performed over the lifetime of a BECCS facility, and the carbon"breakeven time" and lifetime net CO2 removal from the atmosphere were determined. The effectsof direct and indirect land use change were included, and were found to be a key determinant ofthe viability of a BECCS project. Overall we conclude that, depending on the conditions of itsdeployment, BECCS could lead to both carbon positive and negative results. The total quantity ofCO2 removed from the atmosphere over the project lifetime and the carbon breakeven time wereobserved to be highly case specific. This has profound implications for the policy frameworks requiredto incentivise and regulate the widespread deployment of BECCS technology. The resultsof a sensitivity analysis on the model combined with the investigation of alternate supply chainscenarios elucidated key levers to improve the sustainability of BECCS: 1) measuring and limitingthe im
AU  - Fajardy,M
AU  - Mac,Dowell N
DO  - 10.1039/C7EE00465F
EP  - 1426
PY  - 2017///
SN  - 1754-5706
SP  - 1389
TI  - Can BECCS deliver sustainable and resource efficient negative emissions?
T2  - Energy & Environmental Science
UR  - http://dx.doi.org/10.1039/C7EE00465F
UR  - http://hdl.handle.net/10044/1/47928
VL  - 10
ER  -
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