BECCS

01Overview and value chain#

Markers EC: REACH | OECD: bioenergy | Regulator: EPA (USA), ADEME (EU), NEA (China)

BECCS burns or gasifies biomass to generate power or heat, then captures the resulting CO2 before it reaches the atmosphere and stores it permanently underground. Because the biomass absorbed that CO2 from the atmosphere while growing, capturing and storing it produces net-negative emissions rather than merely avoided emissions — the reason BECCS features so heavily in IPCC pathways that rely on carbon removal, not just carbon reduction. 2025-2026 has been the point where a handful of European projects moved from feasibility study to physical construction: Orsted’s Kalundborg CO2 Hub is scheduled to begin capturing CO2 from two Danish biomass plants in early 2026, and Stockholm Exergi broke ground on its Värtan facility in June 2025 with the EU’s own climate commissioner in attendance. The US picture is different — Summit Carbon Solutions’ ethanol-to-pipeline project illustrates that the binding constraint on BECCS at scale is increasingly land-use permitting and local opposition, not the capture technology itself, which is already commercially mature.

The key directions are:

1. Point-source biomass power capture: Retrofitting or building biomass (wood pellet, woodchip, straw) power and CHP plants with post-combustion CO2 capture, the model behind Drax, Stockholm Exergi and Orsted’s projects.
2. Bioethanol fermentation capture: Capturing the already-pure CO2 stream vented from ethanol fermentation — cheaper to capture than combustion flue gas — and piping it to sequestration sites, Summit Carbon Solutions’ model.
3. Capture technology licensing: Supplying the amine-based or other post-combustion capture process itself as licensed technology to biomass, waste-to-energy and industrial plants, rather than owning and operating a BECCS site.
4. Verified carbon removal credits: Third-party-verified methodologies (DNV, Puro.earth and similar) that let a BECCS operator sell durable carbon removal credits to corporate buyers, which is increasingly what actually finances these projects.

Sectoral value chain#

[Biomass feedstock sourcing] ──> [Combustion / gasification for power or heat] ──> [Post-combustion CO2 capture] ──> [CO2 compression & transport]
                                  │
                          (Verification & credit issuance)
                                  │
                                  ▼
[Corporate carbon-removal buyers] <─── [Permanent geological storage] <─────┘

Value chain levels#

Cross-cutting technologies of the sector:

• Amine-based post-combustion capture: The dominant commercial capture chemistry for BECCS flue gas, licensed by equipment suppliers like MHI and Aker Carbon Capture rather than built in-house by most plant operators.
• Biogenic carbon accounting: MRV methodologies that specifically verify the captured CO2 originated from biomass (not fossil co-firing), a prerequisite for genuine negative-emissions credit issuance.
• Offshore CO2 storage logistics: Shipping or piping captured CO2 to North Sea storage reservoirs, the transport-and-storage model Orsted, Stockholm Exergi and other Northern European projects share.

02US#

The United States hosts BECCS’s most advanced bioethanol-capture business model, and also its clearest illustration that permitting and land rights, not capture chemistry, are the sector’s binding constraint.

Ethanol-plant capture, pipeline permitting risk, delayed timelines#

• Summit Carbon Solutions: the Midwest Carbon Express project aims to capture already-concentrated CO2 vented from ethanol fermentation across a five-state pipeline network, but has pushed its operational date back repeatedly from an original 2024 target amid Iowa and South Dakota permitting disputes, lawsuits and route changes announced as recently as May 2026 — a genuine execution-risk case study rather than a technology-risk one, since ethanol CO2 capture itself is straightforward and comparatively cheap.
• 45Q tax credit: the federal 45Q credit remains the primary US economic driver for point-source carbon capture including BECCS, but a project’s ability to actually claim it depends entirely on getting pipeline and storage infrastructure permitted and built — exactly the step where Summit has struggled.

03CN#

China has not produced a company-operated BECCS project comparable in scale or maturity to the Northern European projects in this table — a genuine gap given the country’s parallel, large-scale biomass power fleet.

Biomass power scale without a matching capture layer#

• China operates one of the world’s largest fleets of biomass and waste-to-energy power plants, built primarily for waste management and renewable generation credit rather than carbon removal, and none was confirmed to have a company-operated, capture-equipped BECCS retrofit comparable to Orsted’s or Stockholm Exergi’s.
• Chinese capture-technology suppliers and state energy groups are active in pilot-scale post-combustion capture research, but no China-headquartered company was confirmed operating or building a dedicated BECCS project at the scale of this table’s European entries.

04EU#

Northern Europe is where BECCS has moved fastest from pilot to physical construction, anchored by two projects now within a year or two of first capture and a genuine corporate offtake market emerging around them.

Kalundborg CO2 Hub, BECCS Stockholm, Microsoft as an anchor buyer#

• Orsted: the Kalundborg CO2 Hub, spanning the woodchip-fired Asnæs and straw-fired Avedøre plants, is scheduled to begin capturing roughly 430,000 tonnes of biogenic CO2 annually in early 2026, shipping it to storage in the Norwegian North Sea; Microsoft has contracted to buy 3.67 million tonnes of removal credits from the two plants over ten years, one of the largest corporate BECCS offtake deals signed to date.
• Stockholm Exergi: broke ground on BECCS Stockholm at its Värtan biopower plant in June 2025, with EU Innovation Fund backing and a target of 800,000 tonnes of CO2 capture annually once operational in 2028; the company co-developed, with Drax and Eco Engineers, a DNV-approved methodology for verifying genuine BECCS carbon removals.
• Drax Group: operates the UK’s largest biomass power station (converted from coal) on a fully commercial basis, but its own carbon-capture layer is still pre-commercial — the company’s near-term contribution to this table is the shared MRV methodology work with Stockholm Exergi rather than tonnes of CO2 captured at its own site yet.

05Leading companies and research institutes#

06Tech stack and innovations#

The stack combines mature combustion/capture chemistry with the newer problem of proving, to a standard corporate buyers will pay for, that captured CO2 is genuinely biogenic and permanently stored.

1. Post-Combustion Amine Capture:
   • Licensed processes such as MHI’s KM-CDR strip CO2 from flue gas using an amine solvent that is later regenerated with heat, the same core chemistry used in fossil-plant carbon capture but applied to a biomass or biomass-co-fired flue stream.
2. Biogenic Carbon Verification:
   • Isotopic and mass-balance methods confirm captured CO2 originated from biomass combustion rather than any fossil co-firing, a requirement for the negative-emissions (rather than merely avoided-emissions) claim that carbon removal buyers are paying for.
3. Offshore Storage Logistics:
   • Captured CO2 is compressed, shipped or piped to depleted North Sea gas reservoirs or saline aquifers for permanent injection, the shared storage model behind both the Orsted and Stockholm Exergi projects.

07Value chains and production pipelines#

Industrial pipeline of point-source BECCS (Northern Europe model)#

┌───────────────────────────┐      ┌───────────────────────────┐
│ 1. Biomass feedstock       │ ───> │ 2. Combustion for power/  │
│    delivery & certification│      │    district heat           │
└───────────────────────────┘      └───────────────────────────┘
                                                 │
                                                 ▼
┌───────────────────────────┐      ┌───────────────────────────┐
│ 4. CO2 compression         │ <─── │ 3. Post-combustion capture │
└───────────────────────────┘      └───────────────────────────┘
              │
              ▼
┌───────────────────────────┐      ┌───────────────────────────┐
│ 5. Shipping/pipeline to    │ ───> │ 6. Offshore injection &    │
│    storage site            │      │    MRV credit issuance     │
└───────────────────────────┘      └───────────────────────────┘

Stage 1: Biomass feedstock delivery and certification

Sustainability-certified wood chips, pellets or straw are delivered to the plant, with chain-of-custody documentation required to support later biogenic-carbon claims.

Stage 2: Combustion for power or district heat

The biomass is burned in a power or combined heat-and-power plant, generating electricity or district heating alongside a CO2-bearing flue gas stream.

Stage 3: Post-combustion capture

Flue gas is routed through an amine-based (or similar) capture unit that chemically absorbs CO2, which is then released and concentrated by applying heat to regenerate the solvent.

Stage 4: CO2 compression

The captured CO2 is compressed into a dense liquid or supercritical phase for efficient transport, whether by pipeline or ship.

Stage 5: Shipping or pipeline to storage site

Compressed CO2 is moved to an offshore storage site — for Orsted and Stockholm Exergi, injection points in the Norwegian North Sea — via dedicated pipeline or purpose-built CO2 carrier ships.

Stage 6: Offshore injection and MRV credit issuance

CO2 is injected into a deep saline aquifer or depleted reservoir for permanent storage, with third-party monitoring, reporting and verification confirming permanence before durable carbon removal credits are issued to corporate buyers like Microsoft.