Geospatial Analysis of Near-Term Potential for Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS) in the United States

Bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) is a negative emissions technology (NET) that may play a crucial role in climate change mitigation. BECCS relies on the capture and sequestration of carbon dioxide (CO2) following bioenergy production to remove and reliably sequester atmospheric CO2. Previous BECCS deployment assessments have largely overlooked the potential lack of spatial co-location of suitable storage basins and biomass availability, in the absence of long-distance biomass and CO2 transport. These conditions could constrain the near-term technical deployment potential of BECCS due to social and economic barriers that exist for biomass and CO2 transport. This study combines published biomass production data, published storage capacity data, and newly calculated injectivity estimates at high spatial resolution to assess the near-term deployment opportunities for BECCS in the U.S.
If the total biomass resource available in the U.S. was mobilized for BECCS, an estimated 370-400 Mt CO2 yr-1 of negative emissions could be supplied in 2020. Of the total available biomass, the technical potential of negative emissions from biomass that has co-located biomass and suitable storage sites is 100-110 Mt CO2 yr-1. In 2040, under the assumption that significant quantities of dedicated energy crop production materialize, the total BECCS potential increases to 360-630 Mt CO2 yr-1. Meeting this technical potential would require large-scale deployment of BECCS technology. Over 1000 counties have the technical potential for near-term BECCS, although approximately half of the technical potential is available in the 200 counties with the highest biomass potential across the U.S. If efficient methods for collecting and transporting biomass are developed, this could result in fewer and larger projects, thus decreasing the number of injection wells by nearly a fifth. Specifically, the Illinois basin, Gulf region, and western North Dakota have the greatest potential for near-term BECCS deployment. The high-resolution spatial assessment conducted in this study can inform near-term opportunities that minimize social and economic barriers to BECCS deployment.