Comparison of Long-Term Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage to Reference Power Generation Technologies Using CO2 Avoidance Cost in the U.S.

Abstract

Bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) can sequester atmospheric CO2, while producing electricity. The CO2 avoidance cost (CAC) is used to calculate the marginal cost of avoided CO2 emissions for BECCS as compared to other established energy technologies. A comparative analysis using four different reference-case power plants for CAC calculations is performed here to evaluate the CO2 avoidance cost of BECCS implementation. Results from this work demonstrate that BECCS can generate electricity at costs competitive with other neutral emissions technologies, while simultaneously removing CO2 from the atmosphere. Approximately 73% of current coal power plants are approaching retirement by the year 2035 in the U.S. After considering CO2 sequestered from the atmosphere and coal power plant CO2 emissions displaced by BECCS, CO2 emissions can be reduced by 1.4 billion tonnes per year in the U.S. alone at a cost of $88 to $116 per tonne of CO2 removed from the atmosphere, for 10% to 90% of available biomass used, respectively. CAC calculations in this paper indicate that BECCS can help the U.S. and other countries transition to a decarbonized electricity grid, as simulations presented in this paper predict that BECCS power plants operate at lower CACs than coal plants with CCS.

Can a Nuclear-Assisted Biofuels System Enable Liquid Biofuels as the Economic Low-carbon Replacement for All Liquid Fossil Fuels and Hydrocarbon Feedstocks and Enable Negative Carbon Emissions?

“…In parallel, there have been a series of studies [Fajardy et al, 2021;Kasturi et al, 2021] examining collection of biomass to be burnt in power plants to produce electricity with the carbon dioxide removed from the stack gas for sequestration underground. The results indicate that (1) this strategy is one of the less expensive ways to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, (2) there are massive resources of biomass that can be used and (3) it does not have a major impact on food and fiber prices if properly managed.…”