BECCS: Converting Wood To Energy In The 21st Century

The practice of burning wood for energy generation has seemed like an anachronism in the 21^st century to many, including, frankly, myself. After all, one of the main reasons why England shifted to burning coal for cooking and heating purposes beginning in the 16^th century was due to the rampant depletion of the country’s forests, to such an extent that wood for fuel had actually become a scarce resource.

That was an age during which the clear-cutting of forests for energy purposes was ungoverned by regulatory structures that exist across much of the world today. Though we still see instances in which old growth forests are cultivated for energy generation in developing and even some developed nations, by and large the practice allowed in most of the developed world involves the accumulation of waste from sawmills and forest residuals that is then converted into wood pellets.

Those pellets become fuel for power generation facilities as a cleaner alternative to coal. In fact, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, some U.S. coal plants currently burn wood chips along with their coal in order to reduce sulphur dioxide emissions.

Drax, a renewable energy company based in the United Kingdom, has been engaged for decades in the manufacture and supply of wood pellets for use in biomass power generation for customers in Europe and Asia. While Drax has also maintained operations in the United States for years, the company recently announced the establishment of U.S. headquarters in Houston, Texas, from which it will manage plans to expand operations into the Southeastern United States.

“We did our analysis, and Houston came out on top for many reasons,” Rajesh Swaminathan, senior vice president of North American Operations at Drax, told me in a recent interview. Although the company’s planned biomass operations will be located in rural areas in and around forest lands across the southeastern U.S., the skillsets, office facilities, communications and transportation infrastructure needed mean a central office location in a major urban center. Houston, long considered the capital of the U.S. oil and gas and other energy industries, offered a very advantageous location.

When asked how he responds to those who question the practice of burning wood for energy in the modern age, Swaminathan points to the renewable nature of this form of biomass, and Drax’s plans to combine its U.S. wood pellet operations with carbon capture and storage (CCS).

“We source our biomass sustainably,” he says, “So, if you think about the carbon cycle in the in the past 100 million years, which produced the coal and gas that we’re using right now, the best way to capture the carbon dioxide is using sunlight, solar energy. And we’re producing power from it. So, we’re supporting the grid and we’re capturing the carbon dioxide and putting it back down where Mother Nature had it in the first place.”

Swaminathan adds that, when properly executed, the practice of manufacturing wood pellets using sawmill waste and forest refuse can achieve a negative carbon footprint using this BECCS (bioenergy with carbon capture, use, and storage) process. “We look at biomass by itself, with our carbon capture as renewables if it’s done sustainably, which is what we do for our current facilities. And the carbon capture, it actually gives us the negative carbon attribute added on to what we consider renewable operations.”

That sustainability proposition related to BECCS is supported in a new study released in June by the EFI Foundation, led by former U.S. Energy Secretary Ernest J. Moniz. Among other findings and recommendations, the study notes, “BECCS deployment in parallel with greenhouse gas mitigation measures can help achieve climate goals more quickly, as well as counterbalance residual emissions from difficult-to-decarbonize sectors of the economy.”

While the burning of wood for power generation isn’t scalable to an extent that would enable it to be a leading source for the U.S. power sector, Drax’s goals for its U.S. operation are significant. Swaminathan says the plans for CCS are equally significant. “Each of the facilities we target will capture 2 million tons per annum of CO2. Our target is to achieve that 6 million tons per annum by 2030.” This compares to the 8 million tons of CO2 captured annually at the company’s facilities in the UK.

Another benefit Swaminathan emphasized in our interview is the fact that the use of forest residuals and undergrowth for the manufacture of the wood pellets helps to promote and maintain responsible forest management.

“Forests (used for logging) are managed through a cycle of planting and logging and replanting and so on,” he says. “And those cycles depend on clearing the stuff in the middle: The biomass in the middle, the forestry residues. Doing that allows more light to come down to the forest floor, and that enables the existing trees to grow taller faster, you know, and so on. But there isn’t the ability to, to clear those forests, as an example, if there isn’t anywhere to put that. So, we will come in saying ‘I’ll pay you if you clear that and give it to me.’ Now, there’s a clear incentive to do that.”

In its study, the EFI Foundation expands on the potential benefits of the BECCS method, noting that its promotion of responsible forest management can also lessen the threat of wildfires. “The contribution of BECCS in leveraging wildfire mitigation should be incorporated into federal forest and wildfire policies and programs. Policies should be re-evaluated that currently limit how biomass from federal lands can be used and that restrict its eligibility for clean energy credits” the report says.

Like so many of the new renewable energy and CCS projects we’ve seen announced in the U.S. in recent months, Swaminathan acknowledges that the tax credits contained in last year’s Inflation Reduction Act were a driver of Drax’s decision to increase its presence in the U.S. market at this time. “The 45Q is a big driver for this,” he says. “That definitely made projects like these more feasible. We had plans for this back before (the passage of the IRA). But in terms of fast forwarding these projects, to make them more economic, the IRA was a big help.”

The Bottom Line

The burning of wood pellets is never going to become the dominant power generation source in the United States – the available scalability simply doesn’t exist for that to happen. But it does have the potential to become something more comparable to the use of biofuels in the transportation sector.

When managed responsibly as a part of a suite of alternative energy generation sources, as Drax has done for years, it can help cut the nation’s carbon emissions as part of efforts to meet national net-zero ambitions, all while promoting healthy forest management practices. Considered in that context, it certainly stands out as a reasonable deployment of a portion of the $369 billion in subsidies and incentives contained in the IRA.