Globally, we face an enormous crisis in the form of something called climate change - perhaps you’ve heard of it?
Well something you probably haven’t heard as much about is the plan that many governments and big corporations have devised in order to avoid the catastrophic impacts of climate change - brand new technology known as Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage, or BECCS for short.
This is technology that uses biomass as an energy source instead of burning fossil fuels while simultaneously capturing the carbon being released into the atmosphere and storing it in various ways. For the past 2 decades, BECCS has been integrated into various IPCC models when looking at future projections for how climate change will impact our planet and communities, and has been often counted on as the failsafe alternative to taking more radical, constructive actions against climate change in the present moment, because after all, we can just use this technology to suck carbon out of the air! No worries, right?!
Protocols are often signed and business deals made with the promise of heavily reducing emissions at a future date in order to reach ‘net zero’ by 2050 thanks to this incredible technology, which allows governments and companies to not have to change a whole lot today because this innovative technology will fix everything.
But…there’s just a tiny problem with Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage technology…it basically, doesn’t actually really exist, it’s largely just a theoretical technology that people in positions of power have clung to and gambled on because it offers a truly magical solution…but just like magic tricks here in the real world, it’s all based on a deceptive slight of hand, because this tiny problem of BECCS is actually a few really big problems.
For starters, BECCS has never proven to be a truly scalable technology. In order for it to be achievable before our planet starts feeling the devastating impacts of climate change, we would need to be able to immediately suck up about 15 billion tonnes of carbon per year, of the 40 billion we release annually. Currently, the technology is still in its infancy despite decades of work and billions of dollars being pumped into it, with these small pilot projects only sucking up about .028 billion tonnes per year, and thats not even a verifiable number, with a minimum of 10% of carbon leaking out from even the best facilities in the world. The average facility sucks up about 1 million tonnes, so even if the technology was viable and working, we would need to build minimum 15,000 of these facilities worldwide in a very, very short period, like within the next decade - anyone familiar with hurdles and delays in construction knows how unrealistic that is - and the longer we take for this to happen the more we’ll need to make up for the carbon released during that time.
Another big problem is the amount of ‘bioenergy’ that is required to make this work is massive - it would require about two thirds of all the planets arable land to grow these “bioenergy crops”, most of which is already being used for agriculture or other human purposes, and with a growing population, converting that land means a lot of hungry bellies.
The best land identified to do this is, unsurprisingly, is around the equator, which only furthers the trend of the global north offloading its responsibility and accountability for the problems its consumption creates onto the disenfranchised and underprivileged communities of the global south. Converted land would also include some of the last remaining intact tropical forests we have left on the planet, which not only house some of the last remnants of critical biodiversity needed for life to survive on this planet, but ironically, are huge existing stores of carbon…which kind of defeats the point, right? These crops would also require about twice the amount of water that is currently being used in agricultural practices around the world, and we’re already struggling in many places to make that work as is.
Then in all these calculations, BECCS assumes that the growing, harvesting and processing of these biofuels will be done in a carbon-free manner, but that’s not reality, as a majority of farm equipment around the world is still all fossil fuel based, the cost of which replacing with electric would only add on to the already ballooned cost of this technology. Most detrimentally though, BECCS hinders real climate solutions because funding and energy is tied up in this gamble that may or may not ever truly pay off, when there are plenty of other viable alternatives and solutions we could be implementing today, however inconvenient for big business they may be.
Despite all of these incredibly vibrant red flags and the rapidly closing timeline in which we need to take action to avoid global climatic tipping points, policymakers are stubbornly committed to the gamble of turning this fantasy technology into a reality. It’s not that BECCS wont play a small role in the global solution here, it’s that we can no longer place the health and security of the future of our planet entirely on this gamble, and instead address the climate crisis through more concrete, tangible means such as building efficient grid energy systems with renewables, restoring complex ecosystems for biodiversity, carbon storage and climate mitigation, transitioning away from fossil fuel extraction and use, and reducing the severe wealth inequality around the word that fuels policy failures like this in order to uplift the quality of life for all our citizens so that we can effectively work together and tackle these issues.
I love a good sci-fi story as much as the next, it’s super entertaining and inspiring, sure, but at some point we need to stop living in a fantasy and address the reality we are in here and now. We need to stop lollygagging with these toxically entertaining gambles and take serious, constructive action today to avoid reaching a climatic tipping point which threatens not only our communities, but the health and survival of all species on earth - humans included.
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