Carbon removal with Bioenergy with Carbon Capture & Strorage (BECCS) is an essential method for restoring the Earth’s atmosphere and the Biorecro team has worked diligently to implement BECCS projects at various facilities. The IPCC AR6 Working Group III report states,
“in modeled pathways that report CDR and that limit warming to 1.5°C (>50%) with no or limited overshoot, global cumulative CDR during 2020-2100 from BECCS… is 30-780 GtCO2.”
In other words, BECCS is required to scale to the order of billions of tonnes of carbon removal by the end of the century in order to avoid passing the 1.5°C targets for the climate. This imperative is the scale-up focus for Biorecro, working together with our project partners like Söderenergi.
In 2020, Biorecro began working with district heating and electricity producer, Söderenergi, initiating a study to assess the possibility of installing a BECCS facility at the Igelsta combined heating and power plant. The plant uses recycled and renewable fuels and waste to produce district heating, providing for 300,000 residents and industries in the southern Stockholm region. As one of Sweden’s largest district heating producers, the company stands to make a significant contribution to carbon mitigation for the country.
Given Sweden’s ambition to reach zero emissions by 2045, Söderenergi’s CEO Karin Medin has expressed that sustainable operation is crucial. Because biomass feedstocks used within Igelsta consist of existing waste streams, there would be no virgin biomass used in the BECCS system. The feedstock used includes reclaimed wood, forestry byproducts, sorted waste, and wood pellets.
Complementary to this, the addition of BECCS at Igelsta will capture 90-95% of flue gas emissions from an already existing waste CO2 stream. The utilization of high-purity, second-tier waste CO2 not only enhances the sustainability of the CDR system, it is also more energy-efficient and cost-efficient.
A Future with BECCS
The fifth and final stage of the project will begin with the construction of the BECCS facility in June 2026. When construction is complete the Igelsta plant will have its CO2 directly loaded onto ships for transport thanks to Söderenergi’s access to its own Baltic sea port. Final and permanent storage of the CO2 will be thousands of meters below the seafloor in the North Sea.
Calculations indicate that 500,000 tons of carbon can be sequestered per year at this one location alone. That is the equivalent of 100,000 gasoline-powered passenger vehicles driven in a year. Scaling carbon removal with BECCS is paramount in reversing human-induced climate change, subsequently limiting weather extremes, rising sea levels, coral bleaching, extreme drought, and frequent wildfires.
Being one of the first large-scale BECCS facilities, this project with Söderenergi is monumental and symbolic of the anticipated developments in store for the future. The Biorecro team is proud of the work done at the Igelsta plant and is currently expanding operations with several other projects in Sweden, Europe, and globally.
