Climate-Beneficial Bioenergy: Opportunities and Challenges

The document introduces "climate-beneficial bioenergy," a concept developed by the Clean Air Task Force (CATF) to distinguish modern, climate-positive bioenergy from conventional systems that may cause deforestation or disrupt food supplies. To be climate-beneficial, systems must couple biomass with engineered processes to permanently store carbon, potentially achieving net carbon dioxide removal (CDR). The author argues these systems are essential for hard-to-decarbonize sectors and for counterbalancing residual emissions in sectors like agriculture. Key attributes include using waste streams, non-food crops on marginal land, or forest thinnings, and employing technologies such as gasification or pyrolysis with carbon capture and storage (CCS). The document emphasizes the need for lifecycle assessments and policy safeguards to prevent detrimental environmental and social impacts.

• Climate-beneficial bioenergy is defined as systems that combine biomass resources with engineered technologies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and achieve permanent atmospheric carbon dioxide drawdown.
• These systems are particularly valuable for providing local, firm, dispatchable power and carbon dioxide removal (CDR) for economic sectors where emissions are technically or economically difficult to reduce, such as agriculture.
• Conventional bioenergy is characterized by the use of resource-intensive food crops (e.g., corn, sugar cane, rapeseed) or the combustion of trees that would be better as carbon sinks, often without carbon capture and storage.
• Climate-beneficial approaches prioritize biomass that does not compete with food production, such as municipal solid waste, agricultural residues, forest thinnings, or non-food crops (e.g., switchgrass, willow, poplar) grown on marginal land.
• Specific conversion technologies that can enable climate-beneficial outcomes include anaerobic digestion to produce biogas and digestate, as well as gasification and pyrolysis coupled with carbon capture and storage to produce hydrogen or bio-oil.

APA

Herbstritt, S., & Fallon, K. (2024). Climate-Beneficial Bioenergy: Opportunities and Challenges. Clean Air Task Force. https://www.catf.us/resource/climate-beneficial-bioenergy/

Chicago

Herbstritt, Stephanie, and Kathy Fallon. Climate-Beneficial Bioenergy: Opportunities and Challenges. Clean Air Task Force, 2024. https://www.catf.us/resource/climate-beneficial-bioenergy/.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |last1=Herbstritt |first1=Stephanie |last2=Fallon |first2=Kathy |title=Climate-Beneficial Bioenergy: Opportunities and Challenges |publisher=Clean Air Task Force |date=30 July 2024 |url=https://www.catf.us/resource/climate-beneficial-bioenergy/ |access-date=23 October 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{herbstritt2024climatebeneficial, author = {Herbstritt, Stephanie and Fallon, Kathy}, title = {{Climate-Beneficial Bioenergy: Opportunities and Challenges}}, institution = {Clean Air Task Force}, year = {2024}, month = jul, url = {https://www.catf.us/resource/climate-beneficial-bioenergy/}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }