The role of bioenergy with carbon capture and storage in the UK’s sustainable future
New report explores the role of bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) in the UK's sustainable future including the 6th and 7th Carbon Budgets, focussing on feedstock sustainability. The report summarises discussions from a workshop hosted by the Royal Society and the Nature-based Solutions Initiative with a diverse mix of experts. December 10, 2025
At current emission rates, we will exceed the remaining carbon budget for staying below 1.5 degrees of global heating in just four years. As a result, many net zero policies now rely heavily on options to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. One of these options is Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS), which involves using biomass for energy production then capturing the carbon dioxide released and storing it underground, for example in old oilfields. Yet the sustainability of BECCS depends strongly on many factors, including where the biomass comes from.
Last year, the Royal Society and the Nature-based Solutions Initiative co-organised a workshop that brought together a diverse mix of experts from different sectors to explore the role of BECCS in the UK’s sustainable future, focussing on feedstock sustainability. We aimed to provide an independent forum for participants to explore the key areas of agreement, disagreement and knowledge gaps. This new report summarises the workshop discussions.
BECCS has become a polarising topic, but the workshop aimed to explore the nuances of the arguments in a balanced way. A very wide range of views were expressed, but with broad agreement that while BECCS has the potential to deliver negative emissions, this is highly case-specific. Many participants also agreed that burning biomass without capturing carbon is a poor use of limited biomass resources and should only be considered for genuine waste feedstocks with no alternative uses.
Most concerns were around the use of forest biomass. Issues included the carbon balance (long payback periods for wood pellets from some sources) and biodiversity impacts (with scaling up of biomass extraction from old-growth forests planned in the US). Waste feedstocks were viewed as being more sustainable, though limited in supply. So were UK-grown energy crops such as short-rotation coppice or miscanthus grass, though with issues over competition with land for food production or nature recovery.
The key issue was the scale of BECCS deployment envisaged in many Net Zero plans, with disagreement on whether the need to accelerate carbon dioxide removal outweighed the sustainability concerns over massively scaling up biomass supply. Some pointed to the potential for much greater emphasis on energy and resource efficiency and demand reduction to reduce fossil fuel emissions and thus cut the scale of BECCS needed, whereas others felt large-scale demand reduction was unrealistic.
Since the workshop, the UK’s 7th Carbon Budget has been released, which requires 40% less BECCS than the 6th Carbon Budget and aims to phase out imported biomass feedstock by 2050. This direction of travel aligns with some of the concerns presented in this report.
Read the full workshop report here: The role of bioenergy with carbon capture and storage in the UK’s sustainable future
Citation: Smith, A., Seddon, N., Lynch, J., Sotteroni. A., Hazell, J., Spring, O., Smith, B. (2025). The role of bioenergy with carbon capture and storage in the UK’s sustainable future. Report of workshop held at the Royal Society, September 2024. Nature-based Solutions Initiative, University of Oxford.