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A recent IPCC report emphasized bioenergy with carbon capture storage (BECCS) as a key technology for staying below 1.5°C or 2°C global warming, yet another IPCC report highlights high risks of BECCS in the land domain. Here, we contrast insights from these reports with other recent literature and demonstrate that BECCS bears additional risks for biodiversity, livelihoods, and intertemporal carbon balances. We point out that the majority of scenarios that meet the goals of the Paris agreements exceed sustainability and precautionary thresholds in land and BECCS potentials. Risks may be best avoided by demand-side- driven rapid decarbonization and less land-intensive carbon dioxide removal technologies.

Biofuels have been promoted worldwide under the assumption that they can support several strategic policy goals, while mitigating associated risks. Drawing on published evidence on performance, contributing papers to this Special Section question assumptions commonly attributed to biofuels: their carbon neutrality, their positive effect on rural livelihoods, and policymakers’ ability to effectively govern for sustainability. This paper takes these findings as its starting point and asks, “What next?” for countries wishing to advance biofuels as one option for the necessary divestment from fossil fuels. Deriving recommendations for national biofuel programs from past performance is no easy task. Context, complexity, power dynamics and scaling pose significant challenges to achieving policy aims. We are nevertheless able to distill a set of sine qua nons (indispensables) for sustainable biofuel governance from the evidence and change management literatures. They are put forward not as recipes for success, but minimum conditions and “best bet” approaches requiring testing, deliberation, and refinement. Perhaps the most fundamental sine qua non is to pursue options that downscale global demand – as current levels of global energy consumption, if only in the transport sector, cannot be met by biomass-derived agrofuels in a way that meets social and environmental sustainability goals.