In an article I wrote for Grist on biochar systems, I noted its virtues:
* (potentially) store billions of tons of carbon in soil for centuries;
* dramatically reduce agricultural waste, forest debris and some municipal solid waste, thus eliminating the production of greenhouse gases that result from their decomposition;
* generate energy to both power itself and a surplus for use in surface transportation or electricity generation; and
* greatly increase the productivity of agricultural soil, thus reducing the need for expensive and polluting fertilizers.
Two studies just out substantially support the potential of these benefits. The first is Sustainable biochar to mitigate global climate change in Nature Communications. Here’s a graphic from the Nature article showing precisely how these benefits can be realized.
This is an excellent depiction of the system. The punchline on how biochar can help relieve the pressure on our dangerously overstressed climate system is “Annual net emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2), methane and nitrous oxide could be reduced by a maximum of … 12% of current anthropogenic emissions … without endangering food security, habitat or soil conservation.”
The UK’s Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) has a comprehensive complementary report that also counts the ways that biochar can assist in radically reducing greenhouse gases. This is a rigorous review of the ins and outs of biochar, and is frankly quite conservative, but one of its conclusions remains “…in principle, biochar has a high carbon abatement efficiency and there are some potentially viable options which may deserve more careful attention…”
The very good people of the International Biochar Initiative, and others, are trying now to build a groundswell of support for this enormously beneficial approach to, among other things, in the words of Michael Pollan, resolarizing our farms and our food. It’s not rocket science, folks. But perhaps that’s one of the reasons that biochar is not receiving its due: There may not be a lot of return on capital for the VC community in a manifestly low-tech system. That’s all the more reason, then, why we need to keep this in front of policy makers and show what can and should be done.
