Impact of Biogenic Carbon Neutrality Assumption for Achieving a Net-Zero Emission Target: Insights from a Techno-Economic Analysis

Global pathways limiting warming to 2 °C or below require deep carbon dioxide removal through a large-scale transformation of the land surface, an increase in forest cover, and the deployment of negative emission technologies (NETs). Government initiatives endorse bioenergy as an alternative, carbon-neutral energy source for fossil fuels. However, this carbon neutral assumption is increasingly being questioned, with several studies indicating that it may result in accounting errors and biased decision-making. To address this growing issue, we use a carbon budget model combined with an energy system model. We show that including forest sequestration in the energy system model alleviates the decarbonization effort. We discuss how a forest management strategy with a high sequestration capacity reduces the need for expensive negative emission technologies. This study indicates the necessity of establishing the most promising forest management strategy before investing in bioenergy with carbon capture and storage. Finally, we describe how a carbon neutrality assumption may lead to biased decision-making because it allows the model to use more biomass without being constrained by biogenic CO2 emissions. The risk of biased decision-making is higher for regions that have lower forest coverage, since available forest sequestration cannot sink biogenic emissions in the short term, and importing bioenergy could worsen the situation.