BECCS

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.

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.