Biochar: double whammy

You know the drill, paying other people to sequester carbon for you, offsetting your sin, indulgences. Blah, blah, blah. There's a lot of hatred for carbon credits. But they're such a damn good idea.

Well, it just got better.

This week's Quirks & Quarks talked about biochar. It's the 'good stuff' in Tera Preta soil. Basically, it's burned biomass but burned without oxygen present.

Here's how it relates to carbon credits: apparently, the biochar locks in carbon and makes it not bioavailable (from anywhere from 100 to 1000 years). This means that we can set up factories in various parts of the world and they can make biochar out of (say) tree farms and the like. We can pay them to sequester our excess carbon. Probably cheaper to set up in the third world.

And here's the . .. .. .. .ING AWESOME PART. Apparently, when mixed with topsoil, it seems to improve the health and viability of that topsoil. It makes various types of topsoil better for farming. It holds water. It provides living spaces for organisms. It insulates the soil. Awesome.

This means that when the factories make biochar (sequestering MY carbon pollution), they can then sell the biochar to the farmers: improving their farmland.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biochar

Pinch me. I'm dreaming.

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And presimably this would be energetically favorable too? Making it a carbon negative energy source?

This could be very interesting.

It is a good idea.

Perfection said:

And presimably this would be energetically favorable too? Making it a carbon negative energy source?

This could be very interesting.

Click to expand...

The ideal setup would be to use a portion of the harvested biomass to make the biochar. It's carbon sequestering if done properly. Biochar isn't a form of energy (in this scenario) but a way of sequestering carbon and helping soil at the same time.

The pinch would be that it is used of same material as biofuel, and the global warming problem isn't just about reducing emissions, it's also about replacing oil and coal with other energy sources. If you produce biomass only to make biochar with it, that means it also competes with food production.

Still a very interesting idea. Imagine making biochar in enourmous amounts and spreading it over Sahara desert. Triple whammy!

The main "big picture" benefit of biochar that I see is that it would encourage areas engaging in deforestation for farm land to use a more convervative forestry program to maintain a perpetual biochar plant to enhance their farming. The main benefit of this is that it might convince the jungle-slash-n-burners, who are also threatening the carbon balance, to be more conservative.

If the biochar can be made from any biomass---e.g. 'junk' wild weeds it's win-win for wherever in the world that stuff grows.

Yeah, I heard about biochar about a year ago at a lecture by this guy at FOSL in Santa Cruz. Pretty cool stuff! IIRC, they used to use this in South America pre-whitey to increase the fertility of the jungle soils.