Negative emissions have been highlighted as a key component of achieving the net-zero ambition. However, ground-up approaches are necessary to better understand the realistic potential of negative emissions technologies at the national or continental level. Such an approach was applied in the present study to bioenergy with carbon capture and storage in Norway, starting from mapping and quantification of biomass until the derivation of a window of negative emission potential.
The results indicate that bioenergy with carbon capture and storage could enable between 1 and 13 MtCO2/y of negative emissions, with a more probable range between 2 and 8 MtCO2/y at least in the coming decades. These values are drastically higher than the potential identified in previous studies thus highlighting the importance of bottom-up approaches, like the one adopted here, to better estimate the potential negative emissions from bioenergy with carbon capture and storage.
In terms of biomass, the strongest potential comes from the integration of forestry resources and activities with bioenergy with carbon capture and storage. This potential can be significantly increased if a "bioenergy with carbon capture and storage"-driven expansion of forestry biomass harvesting takes place. However, it is important to ensure that it takes place in a sustainable way and does not result in a decrease in the standing volume of the Norwegian forest for multiple reasons. Integrating waste with bioenergy with carbon capture and storage also represents a significant potential, especially as a substantial fraction is already integrated with energy production Finally, biomasses from agriculture and seaweed farming are expected to have a limited potential, although seaweed farming could take a more significant role toward the second half of the century, depending on the development of this sector.