Sweden and Finland have national goals to reach net negative greenhouse gas emissions before mid-century. Achieving these ambitious goals could employ negative emission technologies, such as bioenergy with carbon capture and storage, but it is unclear how this technology could be realized in an energy transition. Sweden and Finland stand out for having a large share of substantial point source emissions of biogenic carbon dioxide, in the production of pulp, heat and power. In the European Pollutant Release and Transfer Register, Sweden and Finland reported 64% and 51% biogenic emissions, respectively, in facilities emitting over 100 kt of carbon dioxide in 2017, while the corresponding collective figure for all European states in the database is 6%. This qualitative study highlights company actors’ perspectives on bioenergy with carbon capture and storage within a Nordic regional context and explores their perspective on emerging tensions in the energy transition. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 20 of the 24 companies with the largest point sources of biogenic emissions. The results are framed around four emerging tensions regarding bioenergy with carbon capture and storage from companies’ perspectives in this study: (1) absence of reliable long-term policies; (2) limits to companies’ climate change responsibility; (3) technical trade-offs of carbon capture; and (4) lack of customer demands for negative emissions. According to most of the companies, it is technically feasible to capture carbon dioxide, but it could be a challenge to determine who is responsible to create a financially viable business case, to enact supporting policies, and to build transport and storage infrastructure. Company representatives argue that they already contribute to a sustainable society, therefore bioenergy with carbon capture and storage is not their priority without government collaboration. However, they are willing to contribute more and could have an increasing role towards an energy transition in an international context.

Bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) plays a central role in scenario pathways that limit global warming in line with the objectives of the Paris Agreement. Yet deliberate policy efforts to incentivise BECCS—whether through amending existing climate policies or introducing entirely new ones—remain rare. In this paper, we contend that BECCS must be incentivised responsibly, through policy-making processes which account for diverse and geographically varying societal values and interests. More specifically, we make the case for responsible incentivisation by undertaking a comparative analysis of stakeholder attitudes to four idealised policy scenarios for BECCS, including representatives of government, business, nongovernmental and academic communities, in the UK and Sweden. The scenarios were: business as usual; international policy reform; national BECCS policy; and national policy for negative emissions technologies. Based on our findings, we recommend that policymakers 1) recognise the need to develop new incentives and make enabling reforms to existing policy instruments; 2) consider the risk of mitigation deterrence in their real world (and not abstracted) contexts; 3) employ multi-instrument approaches to incentivisation that do not overly rely on carbon pricing or 4) force a choice between technology specific or technology neutral policies; and 5) attend to the diversity of stakeholder and wider public perspectives that will ultimately determine the success—or failure—of their policy designs.

Carbon capture and storage (CCS), including bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS), could contribute to climate change mitigation strategies. However, the 2020s is not the first time that CCS is high on the agenda. This study explores the differences between the past and current developments of CCS and discusses how incumbent actors' experiences can inform the understanding of potential future energy system transitions in Sweden. For this purpose, a multi-level perspective (MLP) analysis was conducted based on documents, interviews and focus groups with key actors. Since the 2000s, increased urgency of climate change has further pushed policy makers into action. In addition, there is a new framing of CCS that underscores the potential of BECCS to provide negative carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, as well as prospects for offshore storage of CO2 in Norway and other territories. As such, this study shows that Sweden could be on a transformation pathway towards implementing CCS alongside other mitigation measures.

Carbon capture from the calcination process in Kraft pulp mills, also known as sulphate pulp mills, has potential as a part of carbon capture and storage (CCS) infrastructure deployment. Growing concern of climate change is increasing the interest for so-called negative emission technologies (NETs), and large emission points have great potential. However, among other factors, lack of financial incentives, trade-off with investments in existing products, and the necessity of large infrastructure that stretch across country borders, constrain deployment. This study investigates two concepts for carbon capture in combination with lime kilns in Kraft pulp mills: oxyfuel combustion and electric arc plasma calcination. The results from the modelling of six configurations show that carbon capture from the calcination process with these technologies can be made with comparatively low additional energy demand. Sulphate pulp production from Kraft pulp mills, which use lime kilns, is increasing in Europe and in the world. Therefore, there is large potential for capture of CO2 from these alternative calcination technologies, both as a first step towards and as a part of a large-scale deployment of CCS and bioenergy with CCS (BECCS).

Among different possibilities to mitigate climate change, the utilisation of carbon sinks has rendered increased interest with the emergence of net-zero targets. In Sweden, despite large forest resources, the product category wood-based panels has turned from being a carbon sink to an emission source. Production data and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) accounting approach has been used in this paper to construct the pool of biogenic carbon sequestered in wood-based panels. We used indices to compare this development and found that it is unparalleled in other countries. We show that it is possible to achieve an increased carbon sink in harvested wood products in Sweden and argue that all options producing real and quantifiable carbon sinks should be given opportunities in the regulatory frameworks for climate change mitigation. We conclude that the increased importance of carbon sinks to mitigate climate change justifies a critical discussion of bioenergy policy in Sweden and the rest of Europe. Additionally, we suggest a policy direction that will promote the cascading use of by-products for wood-based panels without proposing a mandated hierarchy of biomass use.

Bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) can be a useful and cost-effective climate change mitigation tool but it is reliant on economic incentives. With this policy perspective article we question the ongoing discussion about the use of biomass for BECCS with basis in three points: (1) under the enhanced transparency framework under the Paris agreement, all parties to the agreement will use the same guidelines to estimate emissions by sources and removals by sinks, in which the emissions and removals in connection to cultivation of biomass are accounted for in the land-use, land-use change and forestry (LULUCF) sector, (2) adding carbon capture to existing processes may lead to a shift in products from that process rather than an increase in biomass use, and (3) BECCS requires substantial financial incentives. With basis in these points, we argue that a certification framework for BECCS that contradicts the guidelines of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) risks unnecessarily hindering deployment of a potentially cost-effective climate change mitigation tool.