In 2019, the German government agreed on a Climate Protection Program intended
to deliver its 2030 climate targets. Concrete measures, such as a carbon price, will
be put in place as early as 2021. But how to plan beyond 2030? Scenarios can be
powerful tools to envision the world in 20, 30, or 50 years, to describe pathways toward
different visions of the future, and ultimately to investigate technology portfolios and
policy options against their performance toward the achievement of a decarbonized
future. This is why scenarios are especially popular with energy and climate scholars.
In particular, scenarios with biomass-based carbon removal options (BCO2) can help
to highlight how we may reach a net negative emission world. Hence, in this study, 66
energy and decarbonization scenario studies are systematically reviewed for Germany
from the years 2002 to 2019 to assess how inclusive they are with regard to BCO2
concepts. The portfolio of BCO2 concepts within those scenarios is studied over time and
a qualitative analysis of the scenario documentation is performed to identify the rationales
for their inclusion or exclusion. The results indicate “blind spots” of the scenarios with
regard to bioeconomy aspects, as biomass for material use is only sparsely covered.
Likewise, only about 10% of the studies provide a framework for land use changes and
corresponding emission accounting to adequately represent biomass-based negative
emission technologies (NETs) in their assessments. The analysis for carbon capture
and storage (CCS) further reveals the necessity of revisiting the public acceptance
argument which has previously served so far for many studies as the ultimate, though
not well-grounded deal-breaker. Based on the detected gaps and shortcomings in
the current German scenario landscape, recommendations for a more transparent and
holistic representation of BCO2 in the scenario framework are given
