Bioenergy Crops for Low Warming Targets Require Half of the Present Agricultural Fertilizer Use

Bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) is a key option for removing CO2 from the atmosphere. However, the amount of nutrients required to grow plant biomass needed for BECCS questions the sustainability of this climate change mitigation measure.

The principle of BECSS is the use of biomass to generate heat, electricity, or fuels, while carbon emissions from the bioenergy generation is captured and stored. We used present day observations and model predictions to estimate the nutrient requirement of future bioenergy biomass production for  scenarios which rely heavily on BECCS for climate change mitigation. We found that a massive amount of fertilizer would be needed in future to sustain biomass production, corresponding to 56.8 ± 6.1% of the present day agricultural fertilizer. Our study reveals the nutrient challenges associated with BECCS and calls for additional management efforts to grow bioenergy crops in a sustainable way.

Reference:

Wei Li, Philippe Ciais, Mengjie Han, Qing Zhao, Jinfeng Chang, Daniel S. Goll, Lei Zhu, and Jingmeng Wang, Environmental Science & Technology Article, DOI: 10.1021/acs.est.1c02238, https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.1c02238