Biogenic CO2 from industrial emitters present an opportunity to develop carbon dioxide removal projects or produce low-emission fuels and products. There is a whirlwind of different buzzwords here including negative emissions, CDRs, BECCS, BiCRS, SAF, e-fuels, etc. Each term has its nuances, but a common thread is about a pretty big question: how can we use some of the CO2 that comes from burning or processing biomass to increase our chances of reaching net zero emissions.
This blog looks at the role biogenic CO2 from industrial emitters could play in the context of carbon capture, utilization and storage (CCUS).
As usual, we base ourselves on CaptureMap data. If you don’t know what CaptureMap is, check out some of our other blogs where we give a more detailed description of what we do. And if you want a small primer on industrial biogenic CO2 emissions, we highly recommend you glance through this article.
We’ve already looked at biogenic projects recently. But there are more questions, which we hope to address here.
Contents
PS: We recommend reading the appendix to be clear on what we mean when we refer to different terms and how we go about getting our data.
What size of capture facilities are we seeing?
The figure below gives an overview of the capture capacity for capture projects that contain biogenic CO2. It shows that most capture plants being developed are on the smaller end of the spectrum. That’s because these sites are mostly waste-to-energy and cement production, which typically are on the smaller side as well. That said, we also see that many of the capture projects in development are considerably larger than what’s already in operation. Moreover, we see some very big fish in development with capture capacity in the several million tons per annum (mtpa) scale.
| Note: the overview above is based only on capture plants with biogenic CO2 and available data on expected startup year. This represents data for 108 out of 206 biogenic capture projects in CaptureMap. |
What will happen to the biogenic CO2 once captured?
Biogenic CO2 is attractive to many segments. Permanent geological storage is one of them, but also utilization sees big potential in biogenic CO2 for chemicals, synthetic fuels like SAF and e-methanol and the like. The chart below shows a distribution of the known fates of CO2 for the different biogenic capture projects we have in CaptureMap. It’s a fairly even split between geological storage and utilization in terms of number of projects, with a small share stating “a little bit of both”.
What also strikes us as interesting are the 54 projects who have yet to disclose the fate of the captured CO2. Our take is that many of these projects are still trying to figure out the best business model for their CO2, between utilization and negative emissions credits.
How will the CO2 be moved?
Another way of slicing the data is looking at how the CO2 will be moved, once captured. The major takeaways from this figure below are two-fold. First, biogenic CO2 capture projects are spread across different transport modes – there’s no clear preference these days. Second, a lot of the biogenic capture projects still don’t know (or don’t want to disclose) how they’ll move their CO2.
We suspect this is in large part related to the issue of the fate of the CO2, as the final destination will put significant limitations on how it’s best to transport it. But it could also be that these projects are looking for help in getting their CO2 out of there.
What does the pipeline of projects coming on line towards 2030 look like?
The figures below show the cumulative number of capture projects and their capture capacity over time. We base this on the announced startup year of the capture project as well as their current engineering status – both taken from the most recent information sources we have on each site, up to fall 2024. The figures look easy to read, but it’s actually quite dense the closer you look, so let’s break it down a little:
- For every given year, we sum up all the biogenic capture projects that have an announced start-up year less than or equal to that given year. That means for the 2024 column, all projects with an announced start-up year of 2024 or before will be included – roughly 40 in total.
- What’s more, we also categorize them into their current engineering status, and by current we mean based on any announced project updates, up to fall of 2024. Returning to 2024 as an example, nearly 20 projects are currently in operation, 7 currently in EPC, and 13 currently in feasibility.
| Note: the overview above is based only on capture plants with biogenic CO2 and available data on expected startup year. This represents data for 108 out of 206 biogenic capture projects in CaptureMap. |
Now, in an ideal world, based on their announced timeline, all the projects shown in 2024 should be in operation by the end of 2024. But alas, this is not an ideal world. What gives? Simply that projects get delayed or canceled.
About half of the biogenic capture projects in CaptureMap have announced their target year for the start of capture operations. Of those, almost all of them target operation before or by 2030, with a gradual build-up over the years. This means that if all these projects mature into operations and stay on track in terms of timeline, there will be more than 100 capture plants with biogenic CO2 operating in 2030. Note that this figure does not take into account the projects that have not disclosed an expected year of operation.
Inflated or conservative forecast? Good question. On the one hand, this is an inflated perspective because far from all projects in feasibility will actually make it into operation. Furthermore, it’s not uncommon that projects get delayed. On the other hand, it’s also a conservative perspective given there are many projects without announced timelines, and that therefore aren’t included in the figure. What’s more, there are hopefully many projects leading up to 2030 that are not yet announced. In sum, it’s hard to tell how these factors balance out. Let’s have this conversation again in 2030.
82 biogenic capture projects state both capture capacity and timeline to operation. With this data we can distribute capacity build-out with time. If all 82 projects are realized based on their announced timeline, the cumulative capture capacity in place in 2030 could reach nearly 45 million tonnes CO2. This figure is lower than what other organizations report, but we also think it is a more representative and verifiable figure. The reason for that is that we base our analysis on publicly available data only, and that we only include projects that are tied to a specific facility, not vague clusters/hubs nor storage capacities.
Now, how much of the captured CO2 is actually biogenic? Recall that most of these sites have a mix of fossil and biogenic CO2, so the question is actually quite hard to answer. A possible approximation is to use the biogenic share in the flue gas and assume that this is proportional to the total capture capacity.
For example: if a plant emits 100 tons of CO2, of which 25 tons are biogenic, then the biogenic share is 25%. If the planned capture capacity is 90 tons, we assume that 25% of the 90 captured tons will be biogenic, meaning 22,5 tons of captured CO2 is biogenic. Following this approach, we end up with 27 mtpa of biogenic CO2 captured by 2030. Not bad, but certainly there’s a large upside here!
| Note: the overview above is based only on capture plants with biogenic CO2 as well as available data on expected startup year and capture capacity. This represents data for around 82 capture projects out of 206 biogenic capture projects in CaptureMap. |
Conclusion
We think biogenic capture projects are truly exciting. Setting the stage for net-zero ambitions, helping to develop the CDR markets, and providing additional revenue streams in bringing capture projects off the ground – there’s much to like about this segment.
This blog has given a better overview of how biogenic capture projects are developed, looking at capture sizes, fate of CO2, transport options, as well as growth trends towards 2030. We think we’re at the tip of the biogenic capture project iceberg as more and more companies will get their eyes up for the huge potential that still exists. More projects please!
Appendix – Where does our carbon capture project data come from and what does it contain?
Our ambition with CaptureMap is to be the world’s most accurate overview of large CO2 emitters and their associated carbon capture projects. We can’t do that without laser focus on data quality. And it’s this elusive chase of data perfection that drives us and that makes our users come to us. We’re the first to tell you that our dataset is still not perfect. Yet, from our users we also hear that we collectively know more than anyone else, and that our advantage is growing.
Historic CO2 data in CaptureMap is made from a combination of different public databases that we clean, harmonize and consolidate. It’s already quite challenging, but doable. See a blog here about one of the databases that makes us smile and also pull our hair out.
For capture projects we needed a different approach. That’s in part because the landscape changes so quickly, but also because the publicly available databases lack the granularity and update frequency we’re looking for. Therefore, we decided to develop an in-house database of capture projects using Python sprinkled with a bit of artificial intelligence (AI). We won’t divulge all the secrets of our recipe, but in short, it’s a tech stack that cuts about 90% of the processing time compared to manual approaches. And it scales incredibly well.
Our main data source for capture projects are press releases and news articles about the projects, all available in the public domain. This means that confidential projects are not included. We tie information about every capture project back to a specific facility, existing or future, on the map. This means that we do not include projects for clusters or hubs of emitters when the exact facilities are not specified. This strict mapping framework allows us to avoid double-counting, and makes it possible to tie our precise CO2 emission data and activity segments to capture projects.
In CaptureMap and in this document, a capture project consists of a capture unit being developed or already operating at a specific industrial facility. We focus on the capture of CO2 from combustion, process or fermentation emissions, and the database does not include Direct Air Capture (DAC).
We tag each capture project with relevant data about its engineering stage, the planned capture capacity, companies involved in the project, the transport mode and fate of CO2, and other relevant fields.
In terms of engineering stages, projects are categorized within:
- Feasibility: from early concept through FEED studies, until the final investment decision
- EPC: engineering, procurement and construction, from the final investment decision to the commissioning
- Operation: when the plant is operational
- Hold: for projects that are temporarily set on hold but not abandoned
- Inactive: for decommissioned facilities or abandoned projects.
When an industrial facility has several different projects for several capture units in different phases, we distinguish between each of these phases, and each one will be counted as a project. We’ve come across facilities that have one capture unit in operation, building the next one and a third one in feasibility, so the distinction is more relevant than you’d think.
We chose deliberately to include pilot and demonstration capture projects in our database, as they tend to be an indicator that the industrial actor hosting those is seriously considering CCUS as a decarbonisation solution. These projects represent about 13% of all the projects in the database at the time of this writing, and we’ll also make a separate post about these soon.