Tuesday 20^th November (room C21, Pariser Building, Sackville Street) at 1.00pm. 

Biomass Energy with CCS: unlocking negative emissions

Dr Clair Gough, Tyndall Centre, University of Manchester

There is growing and significant dependence on biomass energy and carbon capture and storage (BECCS) in future greenhouse gas emission scenarios in global integrated assessment models. As a result, BECCS has become central to discourses around achieving the goal of limiting global average temperature rise to 1.5⁰C as agreed in Paris in 2015. Reliance on BECCS hinges on its potential to deliver so-called negative emissions in order to maintain sustainable atmospheric concentrations of CO2 in a cost-effective manner. As a young and untested group of technologies, there are many uncertainties associated with it and there is a strong imperative to better understand the conditions for and consequences of pursuing this group of technologies. There is limited practical experience in commercial applications and relatively little research into their potential and the conditions for realising their deployment. The challenges in bringing together modern biomass energy systems with CCS at scales large enough to contribute to negative emissions reductions on a global scale go well beyond technical and scientific challenges. This seminar will draw on recent and on-going work from across the Tyndall Centre to consider the critical challenges and assumptions for the potential for this technology to unlock negative emissions.