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Glossary · Energy industry & energy transition

BECCS

BECCS Bioenergy with carbon capture and storage Biomass CCS negative emissions Climate neutrality

BECCS stands for Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage. It refers to a process chain: biomass is used for energy, the carbon dioxide produced in the process is captured and then permanently stored in geological formations. The term combines three levels, namely the supply of biogenic feedstocks, the generation of energy and the storage of CO₂. BECCS only counts as a negative emission if, across the entire chain, more CO₂ is removed from the atmosphere and permanently sequestered than is released during cultivation, harvesting, transport, processing, energy input, capture and storage.

How the chain works

BECCS can be thought of as a detour for carbon. As plants grow, they absorb CO₂ from the air. When the biomass is later burned, gasified or fermented, CO₂ is released again. Normally it would return to the atmosphere. With BECCS, it is instead captured, compressed, transported by pipeline or ship and injected into deep rock formations. The carbon therefore does not end up back in the air but underground.

BECCS is not limited to biomass power plants. Biogenic CO₂ also arises in combined heat and power plants, pulp mills, during the fermentation of bioethanol, in biogas upgrading and in waste incineration plants. In waste incineration plants, however, only the biogenic share of the waste originates from the atmosphere. If CO₂ is captured there, only this biogenic part is a possible removal. The fossil part, for example from plastics, is merely avoided emissions. EU law therefore speaks more generally of BioCCS, i.e. the capture and storage of biogenic emissions. The technical core is CO₂ capture, for example by amine scrubbing after combustion.

Unit of measurement and system boundary

The central unit of measurement is the tonne of CO₂. However, it is not enough to measure the amount of CO₂ captured at the stack. What matters is the net removal from the atmosphere. For this, biogenic carbon flows, fossil auxiliary energy, methane and nitrous oxide emissions, land-use changes and losses along the supply chain must be taken into account. A plant can technically capture large quantities of CO₂ and still generate only small or even no negative emissions. This happens if the supply of the biomass causes high emissions or if the permanence of storage is not ensured. The EU certification framework takes this into account: a permanent carbon removal unit there corresponds to one tonne of CO₂ equivalent of certified net benefit, not to one tonne of captured CO₂.

Distinction from CCS and other removal methods

BECCS is often equated with CCS, i.e. capture and storage in general (see also CCUS). Technically the processes are similar, but they work differently in terms of climate policy. CCS at a fossil power plant or industrial process reduces emissions because part of the fossil CO₂ does not reach the atmosphere. It thus lowers additional output. BECCS, by contrast, can in accounting terms remove CO₂, because the biomass had previously extracted the carbon from the atmosphere. This removal does not arise from the capture technology alone. It results only from the interplay of plant growth, use and permanent storage.

BECCS must also be distinguished from afforestation, soil carbon build-up, biochar and direct air capture with storage (DACCS). Afforestation stores carbon biologically. How long this lasts depends on forest condition, fire, pests and future management. DACCS technically removes CO₂ from ambient air and requires a lot of energy to do so. BECCS, by contrast, uses biogenic material flows that can in any case be used for energy and thereby supplies electricity, heat or process energy. However, this does not imply automatic superiority, since sustainably available biomass is limited, and competition for land, residues and ecological functions is real. The EU treats DACCS, BioCCS and biochar as the first three methods for permanent removals for which it has established certification methodologies.

Legal framework in the EU and Germany (as of November 2026)

In the EU, Regulation (EU) 2024/3012 has since 26 December 2024 governed a voluntary certification framework for permanent CO₂ removals, often called the CRCF. It sets quality criteria, for example on quantification, additionality, permanent storage, liability and sustainability, and provides for registries for the removal units. The specific methodologies for BioCCS are set out in Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2026/285 of 3 February 2026. It was published in the Official Journal on 17 April 2026 and entered into force on 7 May 2026.

Under this Delegated Regulation, the capture facility must be located in the Union, and the captured biogenic CO₂ must arise as a by-product. Biomass may therefore not be burned solely in order to store CO₂. Facilities that mainly generate electricity or heat from biomass must also demonstrate that they have increased their biomass input by no more than the amount needed as energy for capture. An activity period may last at most 15 years and a certification period at most one year. The baseline is zero tonnes of CO₂ per year. Certification is voluntary. A removal unit is therefore not automatically credited under the EU emissions trading system or towards national climate targets.

In Germany, CO₂ storage was permitted only for research and demonstration until 2025. The amendment of the Carbon Dioxide Storage Act (Kohlendioxid-Speicherungsgesetz) entered into force on 28 November 2025 and is intended to enable capture, transport and storage on a larger scale as well. The draft bill provided for storage in the seabed of the exclusive economic zone. In addition, the act was to be renamed the Carbon Dioxide Storage and Transport Act (Kohlendioxid-Speicherung-und-Transport-Gesetz), and the federal states were to be able to permit onshore storage for their territory. The Federal Government expects that building up transport and storage infrastructure may take seven to ten years. For specific projects, permits, storage access and financing therefore initially remain the decisive bottlenecks.

Role in the power system

In the power system, BECCS is of interest above all because biomass plants, unlike wind and solar plants, can be operated in a dispatchable manner. They can provide firm capacity and, as CHP plants, additionally supply heat for industrial processes or a district heating network. With CO₂ capture, electricity generation, firm capacity and, in accounting terms, negative emissions can thus be combined. However, capture changes plant operation. It requires energy, above all heat for regenerating the solvent and electricity for compression. This lowers the electrical efficiency and increases investment and operating costs. A BECCS plant is therefore not a normal biomass power plant with an additional climate benefit. It has different costs, different efficiency values and different infrastructure requirements.

This infrastructure includes CO₂ pipelines, compressors, ship terminals, storage sites, measurement systems and legal rules for long-term responsibility. Without access to transport and storage, BECCS remains capture without a sink. Storage must be reliable over very long periods, because only then does an emissions shift become a permanent removal. This gives rise to questions for review: Who may book a negative emission, and at what accounting level? How is double counting avoided? Who is liable if stored CO₂ leaks again or the biomass does not meet the sustainability requirements?

Common misunderstandings

A common misunderstanding is to treat biomass across the board as climate-neutral. The simplification stems from the idea of the biogenic carbon cycle: plants absorb CO₂, and it is released again on combustion. In the EU emissions trading system, too, emissions from biomass that meets the sustainability criteria are assigned an emission factor of zero. For the actual climate impact, this view is too coarse. If wood is harvested that would otherwise have continued to store carbon, time passes between emission and re-uptake. Energy crops on land that is important for food, nature conservation or carbon storage displace other uses. Residues, too, are not automatically emission-free, since they may be missing elsewhere, for example as soil improvers, animal feed or material.

A second misunderstanding concerns the role of negative emissions in climate scenarios. BECCS often appears there as a building block for climate neutrality, because some residual emissions are difficult or only very costly to avoid, for example from agriculture, cement and lime production, waste treatment or parts of the chemical industry. Germany aims for climate neutrality by 2045, the EU by 2050. Nevertheless, BECCS is not a general substitute for emission reduction. Negative emissions are limited in terms of quantity, ecology and infrastructure. If they are assumed too generously in models, short-term reductions appear less urgent. The EU framework, too, mentions removals only as a complement to a priority, rapid reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.

Economics and mode of operation

Economically, BECCS combines several revenue and cost streams. A plant can sell electricity, supply heat, possibly provide ancillary services and additionally be paid for certified CO₂ removals. Against this stand the costs of biomass, the capture plant, energy losses, transport, storage, certification and monitoring. Which mode of operation pays off depends not only on technology prices but also on market rules. If removals are certified and paid for, this creates a different incentive than mere remuneration of generated kilowatt hours. If storage access is scarce, the CO₂ infrastructure becomes the limiting factor, not the power plant technology.

The assessment is also nuanced with regard to security of supply. Dispatchable bioenergy can be valuable when feed-in from wind and photovoltaics is high. Its value then lies less in as many full-load hours as possible than in the ability to provide capacity at reliable times. Capture, however, often favours steady operation, because the capture plant and the CO₂ transport chain are then better utilised. This creates a trade-off between flexibility in the electricity market and efficient CO₂ infrastructure. Whether BECCS runs flexibly or is planned more as a baseload plant depends on technology, heat use, biomass contracts, electricity price signals and the remuneration for CO₂ removals.

Conclusion

The term makes visible a system boundary that remains unclear in many debates. A tonne of captured biogenic CO₂ is not automatically a tonne of negative emissions. A kilowatt hour from biomass is not automatically climate-neutral. And a technology option in a climate scenario is not yet a robust infrastructure decision. BECCS can make a contribution if several conditions are met: the biomass is sustainably available, storage is demonstrated to be permanent, competing uses are openly accounted for, and negative emissions are not mixed up with avoided emissions. BECCS is therefore not a single miracle technology but a demanding chain of land use, energy conversion, CO₂ capture, transport, storage and accounting.

Sources

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Edited by eCMS on 11.11.2026 15:21

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