![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.euractiv.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/11\/Biomass-plant-800x450.jpg\")
\u201cThe government\u2019s rationale for BECCS as providing negative emissions violates international carbon accounting protocols underpinning the Paris Agreement, to which the UK is a signatory,\u201d said a statement from The Lifescape Project and the Partnership for Policy Integrity (PPI), two environmental groups that are the complainants in the case.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cBurning forest biomass and relying on BECCS for negative emissions will not contribute to the government\u2019s legal obligation to achieve net zero by 2050,\u201d they warned.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Carbon payback period<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThe UK government\u2019s biomass strategy<\/a>, published in August, contains a chapter on BECCS, which explains how the technology can deliver negative emissions.<\/p>\n\n\n\nBECCS relies on a simple assumption: Because trees and plants suck up CO2 from the atmosphere when they grow, burning biomass for electricity and capturing the related emissions to store them underground will result in negative emissions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
However, scientists say the negative emissions will only be realised once new trees are planted and grow sufficiently to absorb the same amount of carbon dioxide \u2013 a process called the \u2018carbon payback period\u2019 that can take several decades.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cBiomass energy is classed as renewable because it is assumed that the carbon in harvested materials will be removed from the atmosphere through regrowth and, over time, the carbon emitted on combustion will be reabsorbed,\u201d said the European Academies Science Advisory Council (EASAC), an association bringing together the national scientific academies of the 27 EU member states, plus Norway and Switzerland.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But while in the case of solar and wind energy, typical carbon payback times \u2013 linked to mining and manufacturing \u2013 are just months to a few years, the payback period for biomass is highly uncertain and depends very much on the type of biomass used.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cShort-rotation crops and residues from sustainable forestry operations may have short payback periods but harvesting whole trees and additional extraction of stemwood has been shown to have payback periods of many decades or even centuries,\u201d EASAC said in a commentary published last year<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\u201cThis delay is too long to contribute to meeting Paris Agreement targets\u201d of reaching climate neutrality by 2050 in EU countries, it warned, urging policymakers to \u201csuspend expectations that BECCS can deliver significant CDR removals by 2050\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Carbon accounting \u2018gimmick\u2019<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nEven supporters of BECCS acknowledge some caveats. The UK\u2019s own biomass strategy, for instance, says genuine carbon removals are only possible \u201cif the biomass is \u2018well regulated\u2019 meaning if it is sourced, sustainably with appropriate certification\u201d to avoid deforestation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Campaigners, meanwhile, say BECCS can at best be counted as zero emissions but cannot possibly contribute to negative emissions in the short term.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Indeed, under UN accounting rules, harvesting wood is considered a source of carbon that adds CO2 to the atmosphere and is treated as zero in the energy sector to avoid double-counting the emissions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Counting the emissions again when biomass is burned is therefore either a mathematical mistake or a carbon accounting trick, said Mary Booth, director at PPI, one of the complainants in the UK legal case.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThis is an accounting gimmick,\u201d Booth told Euractiv, insisting that BECCS provides no net change in carbon emissions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cPreviously, the carbon was embodied in the trees and was thus not in the atmosphere. Now, the CO2 is held below ground, so is still not in the atmosphere. But there has been no new \u2018removal\u2019 of CO2 from the atmosphere,\u201d Booth stressed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThey are committing the first deadly sin of carbon inventories \u2013 they are double-counting the removal of the carbon. It\u2019s really not an exaggeration to say that the whole scheme is based on the inability or unwillingness of policymakers to do the math!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
EU repercussions<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nAccording to campaigners, the UK legal case could reverberate beyond Britain and have repercussions across the Channel, where the European Union is promoting BECCS as a negative emissions technology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On 30 November last year, the European Commission put forward a scheme to certify removals of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere with new EU-wide rules for third-party verification, management of certification schemes, and functioning of registries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
BECCS was listed in the proposal<\/a> as one of the main technologies to ensure permanent storage of CO2, alongside carbon farming techniques like agro-forestry and carbon storage in products such as wood-based construction materials.<\/p>\n\n\n\nIn addition, the EU executive announced \u20ac180 million in funding for a project<\/a> to convert an existing heat and power biomass plant in Stockholm into a \u201cworld-class, full-scale\u201d BECCS facility.<\/p>\n\n\n\nSupporters of the project say the Stockholm BECCS plant has the potential to remove around 7.0 Mt CO2eq over the first ten years of operation and pave the way for a new market of net carbon removals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But Booth said the project is based on the flawed assumption that biomass is always zero emission, pointing to evidence showing that wood pellets used in UK biomass plants and imported from America<\/a> have contributed to logging biodiverse forests in the US Southeast as well as Canada<\/a>, contributing further to climate change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\u201cIn the case of the Swedish BECCS project, assuming the wood comes from Sweden, if you did the math and added up all the sinks and all the emissions from the energy sector and the land sector\u2026 you\u2019d see that the BECCS project yields zero emissions, at best, not negative emissions,\u201d Booth told Euractiv.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThis comes back to the old problem \u2013 they want to treat biomass as actually having \u2018zero\u2019 emissions, based solely on the accounting convention of counting biomass as zero in the energy sector,\u201d Booth said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The project promoter, Stockholm Exergi, did not respond to Euractiv\u2019s request for comment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Plaintiffs say BECCS technology relies on flawed accounting assumptions because it sees the carbon captured from wood burning as negative emissions when the process is at best neutral from a climate perspective. \u201cThe government\u2019s rationale for BECCS as providing negative emissions violates international carbon accounting protocols underpinning the Paris Agreement, to which the UK is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":135149,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","nova_meta_subtitle":"Environmental groups are taking the UK government to court on Monday (13 November) over plans to spend billions on Biomass with Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS), a technology aimed at removing CO2 from the atmosphere that is also being promoted by the European Union","footnotes":""},"categories":[5572,5571],"tags":[5842,12922,10744,21452,6268,5820,17078],"supplier":[23093,5585,3334],"class_list":["post-135146","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bio-based","category-co2-based","tag-biomass","tag-carbon","tag-carboncapture","tag-carbonstorage","tag-forestry","tag-wood","tag-woodbiomass","supplier-european-academies-science-advisory-council-easac-2","supplier-european-union","supplier-uk-government"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135146","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=135146"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135146\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/135149"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=135146"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=135146"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=135146"},{"taxonomy":"supplier","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/supplier?post=135146"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
BECCS relies on a simple assumption: Because trees and plants suck up CO2 from the atmosphere when they grow, burning biomass for electricity and capturing the related emissions to store them underground will result in negative emissions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
However, scientists say the negative emissions will only be realised once new trees are planted and grow sufficiently to absorb the same amount of carbon dioxide \u2013 a process called the \u2018carbon payback period\u2019 that can take several decades.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cBiomass energy is classed as renewable because it is assumed that the carbon in harvested materials will be removed from the atmosphere through regrowth and, over time, the carbon emitted on combustion will be reabsorbed,\u201d said the European Academies Science Advisory Council (EASAC), an association bringing together the national scientific academies of the 27 EU member states, plus Norway and Switzerland.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But while in the case of solar and wind energy, typical carbon payback times \u2013 linked to mining and manufacturing \u2013 are just months to a few years, the payback period for biomass is highly uncertain and depends very much on the type of biomass used.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cShort-rotation crops and residues from sustainable forestry operations may have short payback periods but harvesting whole trees and additional extraction of stemwood has been shown to have payback periods of many decades or even centuries,\u201d EASAC said in a commentary published last year<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThis delay is too long to contribute to meeting Paris Agreement targets\u201d of reaching climate neutrality by 2050 in EU countries, it warned, urging policymakers to \u201csuspend expectations that BECCS can deliver significant CDR removals by 2050\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Even supporters of BECCS acknowledge some caveats. The UK\u2019s own biomass strategy, for instance, says genuine carbon removals are only possible \u201cif the biomass is \u2018well regulated\u2019 meaning if it is sourced, sustainably with appropriate certification\u201d to avoid deforestation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Campaigners, meanwhile, say BECCS can at best be counted as zero emissions but cannot possibly contribute to negative emissions in the short term.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Indeed, under UN accounting rules, harvesting wood is considered a source of carbon that adds CO2 to the atmosphere and is treated as zero in the energy sector to avoid double-counting the emissions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Counting the emissions again when biomass is burned is therefore either a mathematical mistake or a carbon accounting trick, said Mary Booth, director at PPI, one of the complainants in the UK legal case.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThis is an accounting gimmick,\u201d Booth told Euractiv, insisting that BECCS provides no net change in carbon emissions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cPreviously, the carbon was embodied in the trees and was thus not in the atmosphere. Now, the CO2 is held below ground, so is still not in the atmosphere. But there has been no new \u2018removal\u2019 of CO2 from the atmosphere,\u201d Booth stressed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThey are committing the first deadly sin of carbon inventories \u2013 they are double-counting the removal of the carbon. It\u2019s really not an exaggeration to say that the whole scheme is based on the inability or unwillingness of policymakers to do the math!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n According to campaigners, the UK legal case could reverberate beyond Britain and have repercussions across the Channel, where the European Union is promoting BECCS as a negative emissions technology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n On 30 November last year, the European Commission put forward a scheme to certify removals of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere with new EU-wide rules for third-party verification, management of certification schemes, and functioning of registries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n BECCS was listed in the proposal<\/a> as one of the main technologies to ensure permanent storage of CO2, alongside carbon farming techniques like agro-forestry and carbon storage in products such as wood-based construction materials.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In addition, the EU executive announced \u20ac180 million in funding for a project<\/a> to convert an existing heat and power biomass plant in Stockholm into a \u201cworld-class, full-scale\u201d BECCS facility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Supporters of the project say the Stockholm BECCS plant has the potential to remove around 7.0 Mt CO2eq over the first ten years of operation and pave the way for a new market of net carbon removals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But Booth said the project is based on the flawed assumption that biomass is always zero emission, pointing to evidence showing that wood pellets used in UK biomass plants and imported from America<\/a> have contributed to logging biodiverse forests in the US Southeast as well as Canada<\/a>, contributing further to climate change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIn the case of the Swedish BECCS project, assuming the wood comes from Sweden, if you did the math and added up all the sinks and all the emissions from the energy sector and the land sector\u2026 you\u2019d see that the BECCS project yields zero emissions, at best, not negative emissions,\u201d Booth told Euractiv.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThis comes back to the old problem \u2013 they want to treat biomass as actually having \u2018zero\u2019 emissions, based solely on the accounting convention of counting biomass as zero in the energy sector,\u201d Booth said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The project promoter, Stockholm Exergi, did not respond to Euractiv\u2019s request for comment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Plaintiffs say BECCS technology relies on flawed accounting assumptions because it sees the carbon captured from wood burning as negative emissions when the process is at best neutral from a climate perspective. \u201cThe government\u2019s rationale for BECCS as providing negative emissions violates international carbon accounting protocols underpinning the Paris Agreement, to which the UK is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":135149,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","nova_meta_subtitle":"Environmental groups are taking the UK government to court on Monday (13 November) over plans to spend billions on Biomass with Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS), a technology aimed at removing CO2 from the atmosphere that is also being promoted by the European Union","footnotes":""},"categories":[5572,5571],"tags":[5842,12922,10744,21452,6268,5820,17078],"supplier":[23093,5585,3334],"class_list":["post-135146","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bio-based","category-co2-based","tag-biomass","tag-carbon","tag-carboncapture","tag-carbonstorage","tag-forestry","tag-wood","tag-woodbiomass","supplier-european-academies-science-advisory-council-easac-2","supplier-european-union","supplier-uk-government"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135146","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=135146"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135146\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/135149"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=135146"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=135146"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=135146"},{"taxonomy":"supplier","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/supplier?post=135146"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Carbon accounting \u2018gimmick\u2019<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
EU repercussions<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n