Can Natural Climate Solutions Break Our BECCS Dependence?

Unless things change drastically, we're going to need negative emissions at some point down the road. BECCS (Biomass Energy with Carbon Capture and Sequestration) is the most popular technology to achieve them, and although it doesn't figure in any country's pledges yet, it's crept its way into a lot of the scenarios put forward by international scientists. Everyone expects the technology to feature heavily in the next special report from the IPCC, to be published in the fall.

But BECCS has serious downsides. First, it would be bold to bank all our hopes on a technology that, today, is largely experimental. And second, its large-scale implementation, while helping our climate systems, could trespass a number of other environmental limits. While carbon capture and sequestration is still a valid strategy to use, thinking of it as a massive, monolithic solution to climate change is dangerous.

Luckily, there are other ways to absorb CO2 from the atmosphere. Known as "Natural Climate Solutions" (NCS), they could provide an important part of the necessary negative emissions while improving a number of other indicators. They include measures like reforestation, planting trees in unused croplands or simply improving the management of natural forests.

Unlike BECCS, which poses potential challenges to both the natural world and food supplies when adopted at such a massive scale, most NCS can also help improve water filtration, flood protection, soil health and biodiversity habitat.

In this article, Carbon Brief's Zeke Hausfather has analyzed a number of NCS, quantifying their potential contribution and economic feasibility. These NCS can potentially remove more CO2 than BECCS, at lower costs and risks. Just at a cost-effective level, they could reduce the need for BECCS by an average of 30% across all models.

This is a complex read, and it's not for beginners. However, it's another important piece in the negative emissions debate, and one worth bookmarking.