IME: IPCC Climate Change Report -- The joy of BECCS

It is Green Great Britain Week and today sees the European Launch of the IPCC Special Report at Imperial College.  The IPCC report looks at negative emissions technologies that could help limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. One of the most promising technologies is Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS). 

Today Energy Minster Claire Perry instructed the Committee on Climate Change to look into when the UK could reach net zero carbon emissions and BECCS could be a key technology for achieving this. 

In his blog (attached), the Institution’s Engineering Policy Adviser Matt Rooney examines this complex climate mitigation strategy which combines bioenergy with capturing carbon dioxide emissions.  

For this technology to be developed, Matt Rooney argues that the government needs to needs to take the following foundation steps:

• The first is to develop rigorous sustainability standards for biomass feedstocks to ensure they deliver genuine emissions reductions compared with fossil fuels.
• The second, which relates to CCS, is to develop regional clean energy hubs where multiple industries (e.g. power, cement, steel) can share the same CO2 transport and storage infrastructure in order to bring down costs through collaboration, technological learning and economies of scale.