In IPCC models, BECCS removes more CO2 in 2100 than most countries emit today
The scale of BECCS removal in IPCC models is enormous.
Each green bar shows the median volume of annual CO2 removal with BECCS across different types of scenario in the IPCC's 1.5°C Special Report. For comparison, the pink bar shows the average emissions of a country in 2019.
The largest power BECCS project being developed today aims to capture 4.3MtCO2 per year. The high overshoot scenarios would need approximately 3500 similarly sized facilities to remove 14.9GtCO2 per year, and hundreds of millions of hectares of trees and crops to burn.
A bar chart shows the different levels of annual CO2 sequestration from BECCS in 2100 in IPCC modelling to keep global heating below 1.5C. The lowest bar (for below 1.5C scenarios) shows 5.7GtCO2/yr, while the largest (for 1.5C with high overshoot) shows 14.9GtCO2/yr. For comparison, a different coloured bar shows the median emissions for a country in 2019: 9.3GtCO2/yr.
