Delaying carbon dioxide removal in the European Union puts climate targets at risk

The paper addresses how delaying large-scale carbon dioxide removal (CDR) deployment affects the European Union’s ability to meet climate targets. It frames CDR—via engineered options such as bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) and direct air carbon capture and storage (DACCS)—as essential complements to rapid emissions reductions to limit warming to 1.5 °C, where integrated assessment models foresee 10–20 Gt CO₂ per year of removals later this century. The context highlights limited current CDR deployment (≈1.5 Mt CO₂/y BECCS; ≈0.01 Mt CO₂/y DAC without storage), concerns over costs, sustainability and lock-in, and the policy debate on separating mitigation and removal targets. The study focuses on the EU, which has a legally binding climate-neutrality target by 2050 likely requiring CDR, and poses the core research question: what are the cost, capacity, and system implications of delaying BECCS and DACCS rollout, and how might delays jeopardize fair-share contributions and climate goals?

The authors develop RAPID, a bottom-up multi-period linear programming model that jointly optimizes the EU power system and deployment of BECCS and DACCS from 2020 to 2100 in five-year steps across 28 EU countries. RAPID can be run to (i) minimize total system cost subject to meeting a cumulative net CDR target or (ii) maximize cumulative net negative emissions subject to constraints. Key features: (a) endogenous decisions on technology capacities, electricity generation, biomass cultivation (marginal land), residue use, pelletization, transport (biomass and CO₂), and CO₂ injection into geological storage (saline formations, depleted fields, coal seams); (b) technology portfolios include fossil plants with and without CCS, BECCS using forestry and agricultural residues and energy crops (e.g., miscanthus, switchgrass, short-rotation woody crops), renewables (wind onshore/offshore, solar PV/CSP, hydro, geothermal), and DACCS configurations (electricity plus heat or fully gas-powered); (c) constraints on demand satisfaction, reliability/penetration of intermittent renewables, resource availability (biomass, land, storage), technology diffusion/upscaling rates (e.g., annual capacity growth limits), and cross-border trade of electricity, biomass, and CO₂ under a cooperative EU setting; (d) learning/exogenous cost trajectories for technologies. Life cycle assessment (LCA) consistent with ISO 14040/14044 quantifies cradle-to-gate GHG emissions for foreground and background processes; biogenic and fossil CO₂ are tracked, with manual adjustments to ensure correct accounting of atmospheric CO₂ removal and storage for BECCS and DACCS. Uncertainty analysis explores optimistic/pessimistic cost ranges (CAPEX/OPEX) and emissions (Monte Carlo sampling ±2σ) and sensitivity to biomass potentials. Illustrative scenarios vary the start year of CDR deployment (e.g., NOW starting ~2020, SLOW ~2055, LATE ~2085) to assess cumulative removals, costs, storage utilization, and system composition under a −50 Gt net CDR target by 2100 and under net-emissions-maximizing runs.

- Cost of delay: Achieving −50 Gt net CO₂ by 2100 becomes 0.12–0.19 trillion EUR per year of inaction more expensive if CDR deployment is delayed (EUR2015/EUR2051 references as noted in text). Early action avoids these additional system costs. - Cumulative removal potential declines sharply with delay: - Starting ~2020 (NOW): maximum gross removal ≈ −94.05 Gt CO₂; net removal ≈ −73.73 Gt CO₂ by 2100; storage efficiency ≈ 81% (share of net removal per unit CO₂ stored). Nearly all biomass resources are utilized (≈95% residues; ≈94% marginal land). Geological storage for fossil CCS becomes negligible; BECCS dominates net-negative supply with DACCS complementing (DACCS gross ≈ −21.46 Gt, established in 11 countries; about 268 DACCS plants of 1 Mt/y, with major shares in France, Spain, UK, Italy, Romania). - Starting ~2055 (SLOW): maximum gross ≈ −49.61 Gt; net ≈ −35.60 Gt CO₂ by 2100 (about half of NOW). Only ≈57% of storage capacity used; net-negative not achieved until ~2070 due to residual emissions offset. Biomass use from 2055–2100 exploits ≈86% residues and ≈90% marginal land available in that sub-period, but only ≈63% and ≈57% of their full-century potentials. Storage efficiency drops to ≈69%, with ≈88% of stored CO₂ being atmospheric (DACCS/BECCS) and the remainder fossil; DACCS constrained by diffusion limits and would require roughly doubling plant numbers relative to NOW in some countries. - Starting ~2085 (LATE): maximum gross negative emissions ≈ −7.09 Gt; the system fails to reach net zero by 2100 (net ≈ +1.54 Gt CO₂). Biomass residues and land exploited with BECCS after 2085 amount to only ≈8% and ≈14%, respectively, of their 2020–2100 potentials; DACCS removes ≈ −0.05 Gt by 2100 due to diffusion constraints. Storage efficiency declines further, with ≈25% of capacity used for fossil CO₂. - Resource underutilization mechanism: Delays cause irreversible losses in available biomass residues (decay) and opportunity costs for marginal land, and limit DACCS scale-up due to maximum diffusion rates, producing sigmoid-like attainable capacity growth for DACCS with a critical inflection around mid-century. - System integration outcomes (NOW scenario): By 2100, electricity mix dominated by onshore wind (~41%), nuclear (~23%), BECCS (~8%), hydropower (river/reservoir ~13% combined), offshore wind (~7%), CSP (~6%), and small shares of other sources. Power becomes carbon-negative (≈ −2.4 kg CO₂/MWh) but raises LCOE to ~113 €/MWh. BECCS provides firm/ancillary services enabling high VRE penetration. - Regional distribution: A handful of countries shoulder most CDR. Major BECCS capacity in Germany, Poland, Netherlands, Spain, Finland (~69% of total BECCS capacity). Largest biomass contributions from Spain, France, Germany, Sweden, Poland (~54% of BECCS gross removals). DACCS concentrated in France (~−6.65 Gt), Spain, UK (~−3.64 Gt), Italy, Romania, all with domestic storage. Cross-border trade prioritizes electricity and CO₂ over biomass due to lower transport emissions; decentralized BECCS near biomass sources is favored. - Storage competition risk: Delayed CDR increases competition between fossil CCS and atmospheric CO₂ storage at regional levels, potentially crowding out CDR and reducing storage efficiency. - Policy relevance: Postponing CDR beyond 2050 likely prevents the EU from delivering a fair-share CDR contribution consistent with leadership expectations and 1.5 °C-compatible pathways.

The findings demonstrate that early deployment of BECCS and DACCS is critical to cost-effectively meet climate goals in the EU. Delays increase system costs, sharply curtail cumulative removal potential, and compromise the ability to reach net-negative emissions within the century. Mechanistically, delays squander biomass residues and marginal land opportunities and constrain DACCS through diffusion limits, while also creating competition for limited regional geological storage with fossil CCS retrofits. Integrating CDR into evolving power systems can yield carbon-negative electricity and system services (firm capacity), but requires strategic planning, infrastructure build-out (biomass logistics, CO₂ transport and storage, grid), and enabling policies. Governance and incentive design are pivotal given multi-actor, cross-border supply chains; without clear rewards and targets for removal, large-scale deployment is unlikely. The results argue for separate mitigation and removal targets, coordinated EU action to exploit uneven biophysical endowments, and transboundary agreements for biomass, electricity, and CO₂ flows. Inaction risks missing climate targets and eroding the EU’s fair-share contribution to global CDR.

The study quantifies the economic and technical consequences of delaying CDR in the EU power sector and shows that early, coordinated rollout of BECCS and DACCS substantially increases attainable cumulative removals and reduces system costs, enabling carbon-negative power and alignment with mid-century climate neutrality. Postponing CDR beyond mid-century halves net removal potential and risks missing targets. The authors call for immediate long-term planning, supportive policy frameworks, and cross-border cooperation to integrate CDR into power systems, build CO₂ transport and storage infrastructure, and ensure efficient resource use. Future research should broaden CDR portfolios beyond the power sector, refine regional storage assessments, incorporate dynamic policy and market behavior, and deepen analyses of social acceptance, sustainability constraints, and uncertainty across technology learning and biomass availability.

- Modeling scope: RAPID is a deterministic linear optimization model assuming perfect foresight and cooperative EU-wide coordination; real-world policy, market, and behavioral dynamics are not explicitly modeled. - Technology portfolio and boundaries: Focuses on BECCS and DACCS linked to the power system; other CDR options (e.g., enhanced weathering, ocean CDR, some nature-based options) are not comprehensively integrated, potentially underestimating alternative pathways. - Resource and storage assumptions: Biomass potentials (residues, marginal land), geological storage capacities, and spatial availability are uncertain; although sensitivity and uncertainty analyses are performed, results remain contingent on these inputs and diffusion constraints. - Cost and emissions data: Relies on literature-based CAPEX/OPEX learning curves and LCA inventories with uncertainties; cradle-to-gate boundary and manual adjustments for biogenic carbon introduce methodological choices that may affect net removal accounting. - Diffusion constraints: Exogenous limits on annual capacity growth may not capture potential accelerations through policy or innovation, nor bottlenecks from supply chain frictions. - Temporal and spatial resolution: Five-year time steps and country-level aggregation may miss sub-annual operational dynamics and subnational resource heterogeneity.