Climate-neutral growth – but what to do with the CO2?

For the scenarios laid out in its April 2022 report, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) writes that "negative emissions" are necessary to achieve climate targets of 1.5 or 2°C.¹ By negative emissions, the IPCC is referring to the active removal of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and its permanent sequestration in rocks, soils, vegetation, the oceans or products. These activities can either be nature-based solutions, for example increased humus formation and reforestation, or technical in nature, such as the capture and storage of carbon dioxide in power plants.

Such methods are highly dependent on political, social and ecological framework conditions as well as technological developments. The criticism of these approaches thus abounds. Climate Alliance, too, argued in its September 2021 charter that carbon capture and storage technologies do not bridge a gap – instead they delay and even block the a necessary transformation to a post-fossil future.²

The political process is in full swing
At the end of 2021, the EU Commission declared carbon dioxide removals necessary to achieve the goals of the EU Green Deal and is currently working on a cata-logue of criteria. By the end of 2022, rules for a new market with tradable vouch-ers for captured and stored CO₂ are to be defined. To this end, the Commission organised a public consultation with a questionnaire on carbon capture and stor-age certification in early May.³ The EU Council essentially welcomed the Commis-sion's position at the beginning of March, but noted many modifications regarding additionality and the permanence of storage as well as the avoidance of negative impacts on the environment and biodiversity.⁴ Two methods in particular will have the strongest impact on land use and vegetation and thus also on both indigenous peoples and small farmers: carbon farming and BECCS.

The new carbon farmers?
Carbon farming refers to agricultural and forestry activities that reduce carbon in the atmosphere by storing it in living biomass, dead organic matter and the soil of grasslands, forests, peatlands and fields. In principle, increasing the CO₂ content in our soils is important. However, according to the EU Commission, a business model is to emerge in which "land managers" are remunerated for this extra sequestered carbon, instead of reforming the EU subsidy model.⁵ Here, the devil is just as much in the details as it is in the soil:

• Additionality: To measure how much additional carbon has been sequestered, one must measure carbon content baseline before measures have been taken. But there are large uncertainties. Even in uniform fields, the carbon content can vary by up to a factor of five; differences across regions and internationally are even starker.^{6, 7}
• Durability: A tonne of carbon dioxide remains in the atmosphere for several hundred years. Which farmer can give such a guarantee for sequestration of carbon in the soil? Many projects only have a lifespan of around a decade. Biogenic and fossil carbon cannot be compared.
• A narrow view of carbon alone can lead to the neglect of biodiversity through monocultures and social conflicts.
• The whole process of monitoring is complex and expensive, so the fixed costs for instruments and experts must be allocated to as large an area as possible. Here, as in the EU agricultural system as a whole, large farms have an advantage due to area-based support. Small family-run farms cannot compete.⁸
• A new market for carbon capture credits will emerge similar to emissions trading, not only in Europe but worldwide. Carbon farming will be most inter-esting where land and labour prices are low and social and environmental legislation weak; especially where the risk of land grabbing increases, for example in Brazil.
• The agricultural sector contributed around 11% of EU emissions in 2019, mainly in the form of methane from livestock and nitrous oxide from fertilizer.⁹ Shouldn't the sector reduce these emissions before trying to "neutralise" the fossil fuels based emissions of others?¹⁰ And for all those whose careful practices have already built up high humus levels in the soil, as is the case for many organic farmers, storing additional carbon is increasingly difficult. Instead of being encouraged, they are disadvantaged.

From the field to the underground
Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage or BECCS refers to an industrial process in which biomass, like sugar cane or corn, is burned for "green" electricity and the resulting carbon dioxide is captured and stored underground. An ideal site must therefore have large amounts of biomass nearby (or a port) and underground storage facilities such as depleted oil or gas fields that are expected to remain "tight" for centuries. For all its optimism about technology and the market, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change also sees the risks of BECCS: the monocultures planted for such projects can have negative consequences for biodiversity as well as for food and water security, local livelihoods and indigenous rights¹¹.

The first BECCS plant has been operating since 2011 at an ethanol power plant in the US state of Illinois with a current capacity of 1 million tonnes of CO2 per year. The carbon dioxide is captured, liquefied and then pumped by a pipeline into a saltwater-soaked sandstone formation beneath an impermeable layer of rock¹². Other plants are already being planned in the US, the UK and Brazil.^{13, 14} In addition to agribusiness, the gas and oil industries are driving capture and storage projects around the world since these add value to depleted fossil deposits and thus legitimise further gas and oil extraction¹⁵.

The critical voices on BECCS are well summarised in a recent study by FERN¹⁶: BECCS power plants themselves require a lot of electricity, for example, to transport the biomass, as well as vast amounts of land and water. They are also technologically immature and very expensive, reduce biodiversity and require public subsidies that could be used more efficiently elsewhere, such as in the restoration of peatlands or reforestation.

Preliminary conclusion
The whole approach aims to make carbon capture projects attractive for private investment through emissions trading. In the above mentioned consultation¹⁷, numerous actors from the business sector welcome the plans for carbon capture and storage; some suggest building on Voluntary Carbon Market rules, including Bayer AG. In fact, such projects are already underway, for example in the Lake Constance region in Germany.¹⁸ Precisely because the financing of carbon capture projects through the sale of certificates neutralises their positive effect on the climate, CAN-Europe, the umbrella organisation of European environmental and development organisations, demands that carbon capture not be made synonymous  with emission rights and should instead be assigned a separate, stand-alone goal alongside the reduction target.¹⁹ Completely lost from view in this market approach are traditional farmers or indigenous methods that preserve biomass but do not offer new revenue opportunities. The EU Commission's priorities evidently lie elsewhere: "With the 'EU Green Deal' as the EU's growth strategy, carbon removal should also become a new business model."²⁰

Written by Dietmar Mirkes, former National Coordinator of Climate Alliance Luxembourg

Sources:

1. IPCC (April 2022): Climate Change 2022 Mitigation of Climate Change. Contribution of Working Group III to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
2. Klima-Bündnis (September 2021): Climate Alliance Member Charter, URL: https://www.climatealliance.org/fileadmin/Inhalte/1_About_us/Association_docs/CA_Charter_2021/Climate_Alliance_Member_Charter_EN_2021.pdf (Access on 2.6.2022)
3. European Commission (15 December 2021): Sustainable Carbon Cycles. Communica-tion from the Commission to the European Parliament and the Council, COM (2021) 800 final, Brüssel, URL: https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/better-regulation/have-your-say/initiatives/13172-Certification-of-carbon-removals-EU-rules_en (Access on 13.6.2022)
4. Council of the European Union (3 March 2022): Annexe „Council conclusions for agri-culture and forestry on the EU Commission’s communication on sustainable carbon cycles, Draft, Brüssel
5. European Commission (15 December 2021): Sustainable Carbon Cycles. Communica-tion from the Commission to the European Parliament and the Council, COM(2021) 800 final, Brüssel
6. Célia Nyssens, EEB (27 April 2022): Carbon Farming: myths and opportunities, Event presentation „Carbon Dioxide Removal in the EU“ on 27 April 2022
7. Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP) & European Coordination of La Via Campesina (23 March 2022): Why carbon markets won’t work for farmers and climate, URL: https://www.iatp.org/event/webinar-carbon-farming- why-carbon-markets-wont-work-farmers-climate (Access on 20.4.2022)
8. Hélène Tordjman/European Coordination of La Via Campesina (23 March 2022): Car-bon Farming. A „new business model“ for who?, URL: www.eurovia.org/ecvc-publication-carbon-farming-a-new-business-model-for-who/ (Access on 2.6.2022)
9. Europäisches Parlament (29 October 2021): Treibhausgasemissionen nach Ländern und Sektoren, URL: https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/de/headlines/society/20180301STO98928/treibhausgasemissionen-nach-landern-und-sektoren-infografik (Access on 2.6.2022)
10. Darrin Qualman and National Farmers Union (March 2022): Agricultural Greenhouse Gas Emissions in Canada: A New, Comprehensive Assessment, NFU, URL: https://www.nfu.ca/publications/a-new-comprehensive-assessment-ghg-emissions-canada-2022/ (Access on 2.6.2022)
11. IPCC (April 2022): Climate Change 2022 Mitigation of Climate Change. Contribution of Working Group III to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Kap.C.11.2; see Chapter 7 „Risk management and decision-making in relation to sustainable development“ im IPCC- Spezialbericht „Climate Change and Land, August 2019, Summary for Policy Makers.
12. Biorecro: BECCS Projects, URL: https://www.biorecro.com/beccs-projects ( Access on 25.4.2022)
13. Drax Power Limited: Carbon Capture, URL: beccs-drax.com (Access on 25.4.2022)
14. Bioenergy International, URL: www.bioenergyinternational.com (Access on 26.4.2022)
15. CSL Forum (2022): Carbon Sequestration Leadership Forum, URL: https://www.cslforum.org (Access on 26.4.2022)
16. FERN (March 2022): Six problems with BECCS, URL: www.fern.org (Access on 2.6.2022)
17. European Commission (15 December 2021): Sustainable Carbon Cycles. Communica-tion from the Commission to the European Parliament and the Council, COM (2021) 800 final, Brüssel, URL: https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/better-regulation/have-your-say/initiatives/13172-Certification-of-carbon-removals-EU-rules_en (Access on 13.6.2022)
18. Joshua Kocher (28 April 2022): Die Erde mit Erde retten, Süddeutsche Zeitung, URL: https://sz-magazin.sueddeutsche.de/wissen/carbon-farming-klima-klimaschutz-91475?reduced=true (Access on 13.6.2022)
19. CAN-Europe statement on the „Certification of carbon removals“, interne Arbeitsgruppe
20. European Commission (15 December 2021): Sustainable Carbon Cycles. Communica-tion from the Commission to the European Parliament and the Council, COM(2021) 800 final, Brüssel