Putting Bioenergy With Carbon Capture and Storage in a Spatial Context: What Should Go Where?

This paper explores the implications of siting a bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) facility to carbon emission performances for three case-study supply chains using the Carbon Navigation System (CNS) model. The three case-study supply chains are a wheat straw derived BECCS-power, a municipal solid waste derived BECCS-waste-to-energy and a sawmill residue derived BECCS-hydrogen. A BECCS facility needs to be carefully sited, taking into consideration its local low carbon infrastructure, available biomass and geography for successful deployment and achieving a favorable net-negative carbon balance. On average, across the three supply chains a 10 km shift in the siting of the BECCS facility results in an 8.6–13.1% increase in spatially explicit supply chain emissions. BECCS facilities producing low purity CO 2 at high yields have lower spatial emissions when located within the industrial clusters, while those producing high purity CO 2 at low yields perform better outside the clusters. A map is also generated identifying which of the three modeled supply chains delivers the lowest spatially explicit supply chain emission options for any given area of the UK at a 1 MtCO 2 /yr capture scale.