Is biochar the world’s most promising solution to climate change? That seems to be the news coming out of a multiyear study published in Nature Communication this week.
From WalesOnline:
A substance invented thousands of years ago by Amazonian Indians could hold the key to defeating man-made global warming, Welsh scientists believe.
Here’s the headline from The New Republic, not usually a supporter of anything that might help the timber industry:
Yes, Biochar Really Might Be That Magical
The gist of the study is that biochar could offset up to 12 percent of the world’s current greenhouse-gas emissions. It does this by “reducing methane production from decaying plant waste, reducing nitrous oxide release from soils, and avoiding carbon dioxide emissions by storing carbon in the soil,” according to the BBC.
Twelve percent is no panacea, but it’s as close to a lifesaver as we get with climate change nowadays. Is it possible that a charcoal formed from the burning of wood waste and other materials could provide, at least in part, environmental salvation?
The answer is maybe.
First the positive:
The vision put forward is of a world where waste is burned, where some of the heat from that burning is used to transform waste to charcoal, and where the charcoal is ploughed into soil, increasing its capacity to support crops and locking up carbon for centuries, possibly millennia.
The waste that can be used includes spare stuff from plants, such as husks and shells and stems, and even sewage and plastics – pretty much anything based on carbon, in principle.
Even sewage and plastics!
What’s proposed would be nothing less than a revolution in the way we handle waste – turning it from waste into fuel, fertiliser and climate saviour with a single blast of the charcoal oven.
Now here’s the rub:
The big question, though, is whether you can grow the plants needed for biochar sustainably. As groups like Biofuels Watch have warned, if farmers start tilling virgin land to grow switchgrass, with the intention of creating biochar, then that could end up releasing additional carbon-dioxide and methane into the air. Alternatively, if biochar crops are grown on existing farmland, then that might encourage farmers elsewhere to hack down forests for space to grow the displaced food crops. This could be like the destructive ethanol craze all over again.
So for the Nature Communications study, the researchers just looked at the world’s supply of crop leftovers: corn leaves and stalks, rice husks, livestock manure, yard trimmings. If virtually all of that biomass was used to make biochar, we could conceivably offset 12 percent of global carbon emissions. Trouble is, it would take a massive shift in production: “Using biochar to reduce greenhouse gas emissions at these levels is an ambitious project that requires significant commitments from the general public and government,” said study co-author Jim Amonette of the Energy Department’s Pacific Northwest Laboratory. “We will need to change the way we value the carbon in biomass.”
Well said. While those of us who care about working forests know about the benefits of biomass, the rest of the world still needs to get the message. The stakes are high, and not just for the timber industry. This is much bigger than us.
Plastics are not a feedstock for Biochar,
They can be gasified for fuel.
Biochar needs the plant cell structure formed in the lignins & cellulose.
All political persuasions agree, building soil carbon is GOOD.
To me, in the long run, the final arbiter / accountancy / measure of sustainability will be soil carbon content and the truth of proper land-management and Biochar systems will be self-evident.
The Agricultural Soil Carbon Sequestration Standard is in final review by the AMS-ARC branch at USDA, which allows Farmers account for their good work.
My read of the agronomic history of civilization shows that the Kayopo Amazon Indians and the Egyptians were the only ones to maintain fertility for the long haul, millennium scales. Egypt has now forsaken their geologic advantage by building the Aswan dam, and are stuck, with the rest of us, in the soil Carbon mining, NPK rat race, to the bottom.
In E. O. Wilson’s “The Future of Life” he opens the book with a letter to Thoreau updating him on our current understanding of the nature of the ecology of the soils at Walden Pond.
Arthropods present in dozens-hundreds, then barely visible to the naked eye, the numbers jump to thousands; Nematode and enchytraied pot worms, mites, springtails, pauropods, diplurans, symphylans, and tardigrades seethe in the underground. Their home is a labyrinth of miniature caves and walls of rotting vegetable debris cross-strung with ten yards of fungal threads. Penetrate microscopic water films on grains of sand, and find ten billion bacteria in a thimble full.
and Wilson concludes;
“Now it is up to us to summon a more Encompassing Wisdom.”
Agriculture allowed our cultural accent and Agriculture will now prevent our descent.
Wise Land management; Organic farming and afforestation can build back our soil carbon,
Biochar allows the soil food web to build much more recalcitrant organic carbon, ( living biomass & Glomalins) in addition to the carbon in the biochar.
Every 1 ton of Biomass yields 1/3 ton Charcoal for soil Sequestration (= to 1 Ton CO2e) + Bio-Gas & Bio-oil fuels = to 1MWh exported electricity, so is a totally virtuous, carbon negative energy cycle.
Biochar viewed as soil Infrastructure; The old saw;
“Feed the Soil Not the Plants” becomes;
“Feed, Cloth and House the Soil, utilities included !”.
Free Carbon Condominiums with carboxyl group fats in the pantry and hydroxyl alcohol in the mini bar.
Build it and the Wee-Beasties will come.
Microbes like to sit down when they eat.
By setting this table we expand husbandry to whole new orders & Kingdoms of life.
( These oxidised surface charges; carbonyl. hydroxyl, carboxylic acids, and lactones or quinones, have as well a role as signaling substances towards bacteria, fungi and plants.)
This is what I try to get across to Farmers, as to how I feel about the act of returning carbon to the soil. An act of penitence and thankfulness for the civilization we have created. Farmers are the Soil Sink Bankers, once carbon has a price, they will be laughing all the way to it.
Unlike CCS which only reduces emissions, biochar systems draw down CO2 every energy cycle, closing a circle back to support the soil food web. The photosynthetic “capture” collectors are up and running, the “storage” sink is in operation just under our feet. Pyrolysis conversion plants are the only infrastructure we need to build out.
For those looking for an overview of biochar and its benefits, These authors have done a very nice job of distilling a great deal of information about biochar and applying it to the US context:
US -Focused Biochar report: Assessment of Biochar’s Benefits for the USA http://www.biochar-us.org/pdf%20files/biochar_report_lowres.pdf
Ultimately we must leave the combustion age behind. Charcoal to the soil is a bridging first step as other energy conversion technologies bloom from Nano and bio reasearch. Thankfully we can do Pyrolitic Biofuels now.
Oil interest must come to see the overwhelming value of their carbon as the feedstock for the manufacture ( via carbon nanotubes, fullerines, DNA programed nano self assembly, etc.) of virtually all things in the near future.
This convergence of different technologies will end the Combustion age.