Summary/Abstract
This paper finds that BECCS can, and likely will, play a role in carbon reduction, but care needs to be taken not to exaggerate its potential, given that (a) there are few studies of the cost of connecting bio-processing (combustion, gasification or other) infrastructure with CO2 storage sites; and (b) that scenarios of global bioenergy potential remain contentious. The paper identifies some of the challenges facing BECCS deployment within the economic instruments of the European Union and existing global agreements and concludes that while biomass co-firing with coal offers an early route to BECCS, smaller scale BECCS, through co-location of dedicated or co-combusted biomass on fossil CCS CO2 transport pipeline routes, is easier to envisage and would be potentially less problematic.