Bioenergy with carbon capture and storage

Bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) is the process of extracting bioenergy from biomass and capturing and storing the carbon, thereby removing it from the atmosphere. BECCS can theoretically be a "negative emissions technology" (NET), although its deployment at the scale considered by many governments and industries can "also pose major economic, technological, and social feasibility challenges; threaten food security and human rights; and risk overstepping multiple planetary boundaries, with potentially irreversible consequences". The carbon in the biomass comes from the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide (CO₂) which is extracted from the atmosphere by the biomass when it grows. Energy ("bioenergy") is extracted in useful forms (electricity, heat, biofuels, etc.) as the biomass is utilized through combustion, fermentation, pyrolysis or other conversion methods.

Some of the carbon in the biomass is converted to CO₂ or biochar which can then be stored by geologic sequestration or land application, respectively, enabling carbon dioxide removal (CDR).

The potential range of negative emissions from BECCS was estimated to be zero to 22 gigatonnes per year. As of 2019, five facilities around the world were actively using BECCS technologies and were capturing approximately 1.5 million tonnes per year of CO₂. Wide deployment of BECCS is constrained by cost and availability of biomass.^: 10