BECCS in South Korea - An Analysis of Negative Emissions Potential for Bioenergy as a Mitigation Tool

The objective of this study is to analyze the in-situ BECCS capacity for green field bioenergy plants in South Korea.A technical assessment is used to support a policy discussion on the suitability of this mitigation tool.We first examined the technical potential of bioenergy production from domestic forest biomass.For this exercise, in a first step, the biophysical Global Forestry Model G4M was applied in order to estimate the biomass availability.In a second step, the biomass results from the forestry model were used as input data for an engineering model (BeWhere) for optimized scaling and locating of coupled heat and power plants (CHP).The obtained geographically explicit locations and capacities for forest-based bioenergy plants were then overlaid with a geological suitability map for carbon storage.From this, a theoretical potential for in-situ BECCS was derived.Results indicated that, given the abundant forest cover in South Korea, there is a substantial potential for bioenergy production which could contribute to substituting emissions from fossil fuels and to meeting the targets of the country's commitments under any climate change mitigation agreement.However, there seems to be only limited potential for direct in-situ carbon storage in South Korea.