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.
With the preamble out of the way, here are some key questions we’ll aim to address in this blog:
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 are the global volumes of industrial biogenic CO2?
The map below shows all the industrial emitters we have in CaptureMap with at least 1 tonne of biogenic CO2 emissions. In total, there are close to 2200 facilities with 727 million tons of total annual CO2 emissions (mtpa). Of these 727 mtpa, 380 mtpa are biogenic CO2, which gives an average biogenic share of 52 %. Do note that the biogenic share across activities varies considerably, from quite small (for example at cement plants) to 100% (for example at biomass power plants). You can also have large variations within an activity category (for cement it varies between 0 all the way up to 51 %).
CaptureMap as a whole covers 178 countries. But looking at the map, you’ll notice that emitters with biogenic CO2 are confined to Europe and North America. What gives? Simply that finding quality, biogenic CO2 data in other regions is pretty tricky. If you happen to stumble over a good public source, don’t be shy to let us know and we can take a closer look.
One important disclaimer: what about ethanol? Great question. Ethanol certainly has biogenic CO2, but they are typically not obliged to report it, and hence it doesn’t show up as biogenic emissions in CaptureMap. This means that the projects and volumes in this article exclude ethanol.
If you’re particularly interested in ethanol, have a closer look at this blog to learn smart ways to work around this. If we include the US ethanol facilities, you can add roughly 170 sites and 40 mtpa of biogenic to the figures above. We also have 110 active capture projects registered for US ethanol facilities, of which 73 are in feasibility, 4 are in EPC and 33 in operation, with 10,2mtpa known capture capacity. The remainder of the analysis does not include ethanol facilities, so keep this in mind when looking at the figures.
Where are biogenic capture projects located?
As of fall 2024, there are 1063 carbon capture projects in the world. Of these, a total of 206 capture plants have at least some biogenic CO2. Focusing on these capture projects with biogenic CO2, 32 are in operation, 18 are in EPC, and 142 in feasibility, whereas the remaining 14 are either inactive or on hold.
The map below illustrates the location and engineering stage of the different biogenic capture projects CaptureMap currently covers, along with emitters marked in gray where we have not as of yet identified capture projects.
The chart below shows a country-by-country overview of biogenic capture projects. The US leads the way, while there are several individual countries in Europe not far behind. Comparing continents, Europe has more than 80% of the biogenic capture projects to date, with North America a little less than 20 %. In our discussions with customers, we are also under the impression that the biogenic perspective is more advanced in Europe – at least for the time being. Volume wise, there’s no reason why the split between the continents shouldn’t be more equal, they have roughly the same amount of biogenic CO2 available.
What are the trends of biogenic project announcements?
The chart below shows a historic timeline of biogenic capture project announcements over time, going back to 2015. Total capture capacities (in mtpa) are shown as columns in green and measured on the left vertical axis, while the number of projects announced are shown as the line in yellow and measured on the right vertical axis.
A total of 43 new capture projects with biogenic CO2 were announced in 2023 – meaning information about them appeared in public space for the first time. This is roughly on the level as the two years before, and really since 2019 it’s been a pretty good stream of projects.
Less than half of the announced projects in 2023 had capture capacity quantified, and on average each of these projects would capture ca. 460 000 tonnes CO2 per year (both fossil and biogenic included here), with very large variations between projects. The total capture capacity of biogenic capture projects announced in 2023 is about 11 million tonnes CO2 per year, for the projects with that data available.
While not complete, we thought we’d include 2024 as an interesting comparison point. As of end-of-August, there were 18 projects announced in 2024, of which 10 had quantified capture capacity volumes summing to 4,6 million tonnes CO2 per year. This seems to lag somewhat with the announcements made in the last three years, but not as much of a drop as what we’ve seen for the CCUS sector overall. Could biogenic CO2 capture projects be more robust against decarbonization headwinds?
What total capture volumes are we talking about?
In total, there are 192 active biogenic capture projects, of which 113 of them have made public their capture capacities for a total of 57 mtpa. Note that this total includes both fossil and biogenic CO2, since most facilities with biogenic CO2 also have fossil CO2. Using projects with known capture capacity as basis for extrapolation for the project without stated capture capacity, we arrive at the figure below, indicating an estimated 97 mtpa of capture capacity.
Another element we’ve found quite interesting is the evolution of capture capacity within biogenic capture projects. It’s a clear signal that biogenic capture projects are moving towards larger scale::
- For the 32 projects in operation, we have capture capacity for 12 of them, with an an average capture capacity of 193 ktpa (kilotonnes per annum)
- For the 18 projects in EPC, we have capture capacity for 13 of them, with an average of 230 ktpa.
- For the 142 projects in feasibility, we have capture capacity for 88 of them, with an average of 587 ktpa. This last category also includes the Drax Selby Power Station biogenic project, which is a large fossil power plant converted to biomass. That project alone has a capture capacity of 8 mtpa, which naturally pulls up the average quite a bit. But, even removing this project, leads to average capture capacity above 500 ktpa.
What industrial segments are pursuing biogenic CCUS?
The chart below ranks the biogenic capture projects per activity, by number of projects. Surprisingly for some, perhaps, is to find cement projects at the top of the list. Why is that?
Cement sites typically have a low biogenic share. Out of 144 cement sites with biogenic CO2 emissions in CaptureMap, the average biogenic share is 8 %, and it ranges from 1 % all the way up to 51 %. For the record, we have another 2141 cement emitter sites without biogenic CO2, so it’s a relatively small subsegment.
That said, cement is a hard-to-abate sector, and those sites with biogenic CO2 will likely correlate well with the sites that are at the forefront of pushing decarbonization, including carbon capture. It’s a stretch to say that cement plants will do carbon capture because they have biogenic CO2. Still, out of all the 105 capture projects we have registered for cement, 50 % have biogenic CO2 in their flue gas.
Waste management is the second highest segment, in terms of capture projects with biogenic CO2. This is less surprising than cement, since waste-to-energy plants typically emit 50% biogenic CO2 in their flue stack, making them a good candidate for biogenic CO2 capture. Read more about waste-to-energy in our dedicated post.
Conclusion
Biogenic capture projects are their own niche within the CCUS space. In this blog post, we’ve identified where biogenic capture projects are happening, bearing in mind important limitations in data completeness for regions outside of Europe and North America. While there are quite a few biogenic projects taking place, there are many more biogenic emitter sites without known active projects, so there is certainly a larger potential here going forwards. Project announcement trends seem to indicate a certain resiliency for biogenic projects compared to the CCUS segment overall, so we’re hopeful of more projects to come.
Capture capacities of biogenic projects are also growing, so provided some of the projects now in feasibility make it to FID, there should be greater volumes all together in the time to come.
Our blog has also opened up to a few questions:
- What will happen to the biogenic CO2 once captured?
- How will the CO2 be moved?
- What does the pipeline of projects coming on line towards 2030 look like?
We look forward to answering those questions in a blog a little later this fall. Stay tuned!
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 decarbonization 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.