BECCS: Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage
••••••One particular technology that has quietly risen to prominence is the idea is to cultivate fast-growing grasses and trees to suck CO2 out of the atmosphere and then burn them at power plants to generate energy. But instead of being released back into the atmosphere in the exhaust, the crops' carbon would be captured and pumped underground. The technique is known as bioenergy with carbon capture and storage, or simply as BECCS.

••••••Many have raised concerns about the amount of land required and its displacement of food crops if BCCS were to be the a major NETs for combating global warming. Some have estimated for this to work would require an area equal to that of India and possibly Australia, and would have a negative effect on croplands. As the population continues to increase over the next 100 years this would become a major problem.

••••••An additional concern relates to the permanence of carbon sequestration. If large volumes of sequestered CO2 are released it would be both dangerous and would defeat the purpose of BECCS.


Rosen, J. The Carbon Harvest. Science 359:733-737, 2018


••••••