Carbon Capture and Storage for Small-to-Medium Biorefineries: Promising Carbon Removal Solution with Economic Challenges

Abstract

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) integrated with biomass-based fuel production can provide cost-effective biomass carbon removal and storage (BiCRS) and produce high-value bioproducts, such as sustainable aviation fuels. To accelerate BiCRS deployment, it is crucial to quantify the costs of CCS integration, particularly for small- and medium-scale biorefineries that are representative of early-stage deployment. Existing studies tend to focus on plant sizes that are orders-of-magnitude larger than early-stage installations, possibly underestimating CCS costs for small-to-medium biorefineries. We show that the capture, transport, and storage costs to maximize CO₂ removal from a 526 dry tonne per day (tpd) biomass gasification plant (largest existing size) could be 13–47% higher than costs for a typical modeled plant size (2000 dry tpd). The higher cost estimates are driven by less favorable economies of scale and realistic assumptions about the availability of affordable CO₂ transport infrastructure with both drivers broadly applicable to other BiCRS technologies. Compliance and voluntary carbon markets could incentivize biorefinery CCS, but both carry a high degree of uncertainty. These findings highlight that sufficient and reliable financial mechanisms would be essential to unlocking the full CO₂ removal potential of biorefineries and facilitating BiCRS scale-up.