The bioeconomy brings opportunities for economic growth while tackling climate change. Fossil carbon resources can be replaced by bio-based carbon resources, especially biomass. To allow these solutions to be scaled up without threats to biodiversity and the environment, it is necessary to develop the bioeconomy as a circular economy. With this carbon management approach, other sources of carbon complement biomass: industrial waste, including gases such as CO and CO2, as well as physically and chemically recycled carbon. In the future, direct air capture (DAC) may become competitive and form part of the solution. These approaches can be considered ‘circular’ because they close material loops and keep carbon recycling in the economy rather than emitting carbon to the atmosphere. This report reviews a number of hybrid technologies that can be deployed to ‘defossilise’ economic sectors and sets out policy options to bring these technologies to commercial scale. In this case ‘hybrid’ refers to a combination of different types of technologies that can achieve a goal where a single technology cannot.

This report focuses on relieving pressures on land from agriculture and forestry by enlarging the bioeconomy to include alternative sources of bio-based carbon to complement biomass. In climate policy, most attention and resources has gone into energy and transportation, while much less attention has been given to industry. Yet, reaching net-zero greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 2050 requires the action of all countries and all sectors. The IPCC has warned that unless deep greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions cuts occur within the coming decades, limiting global warming to well below 2°C or 1.5°C, as stated in the Paris Agreement, will not be possible.

This chapter describes how carbon management strategies transcend the bioeconomy by including recycling of carbon and the renewable energy needed to drive carbon conversion and upgrading. Hence, carbon management should be seen as the integration of the bioeconomy, carbon recycling and renewable energy.

This chapter lays out the main messages and major policy findings derived from an evidence base which consists of: sixteen national case studies from nine OECD member states; four international workshops during the research phase of the project; one workshop post-research; contributions to several IEA/Biofuture Platform workshops leading up to the Clean Energy Ministerialwww.cleanenergyministerial.org/applications-now-open-for-cem13-mi7-side-events/#:~:text=The%2013th%20Clean%20Energy%20Ministerial,2022%20in%20Pittsburgh%2C%20United%20States Last accessed 1 March 2023. ; desk research and detailed inputs from the steering group for this work. As a further aid to policy analysis, the IEA maintains a database of CCUS policieswww.iea.org/policies?topic=Carbon%20Capture%20Utilisation%20and%20Storage Last accessed 1 March 2023..

The complexity of carbon management in terms of the range of economic sectors and the developing technologies suggests that applying policy to only a single part of a value chain or ecosystem of actors is likely to cause knock-on effects elsewhere. In holistic policy formulation, the core policy problems that tend to afflict the activities of innovation systems are identified, including the unintended consequences of policy itself. It is especially important due to the need for a range of both technology-push and market-pull policies.

This chapter seeks to illustrate the importance of technological development in carbon management. It is worth noting that while most technologies have some relation to climate action, the perspective presented here is much broader and consistent with the message of avoiding ‘sustainability tunnel vision’. It will be apparent that there is very large scope for ‘hybrid’ technologies, involving more than one type of technology, such as a combination of bio- and nano-technologies.

This chapter presents sixteen case studies submitted by nine OECD member states. They are summarised and include the policy issues raised by the authors of the case studies. This list of case studies provides an insight into the extent to which hybrid technologies, involving more than one single technology, will be important in the net-zero carbon landscape later this century.

This chapter highlights key aspects of the publication, focusing on broader sustainability issues and the risks of over-relying on biomass as a future feedstock. It emphasises the importance of a unified policy language, particularly in differentiating between CCU and CCS technologies, and stresses the need for careful evaluation of technologies ahead of the 2050 net-zero carbon deadline, highlighting the significant infrastructural changes required.