Biochar

Interesting expose on biochar today from 2 professors from the school of geoscience. Biochar is a process whereby energy crops, agricultural residue and other organic waste is converted into charcoal through a process called pyrolysis. The carbon contained in the biomass is stored in the biochar and if it's not combusted, can store carbon for 100's of years. The added bonus of biochar is that it can be returned to the soil and has properties that improve the productivity of crops, thus having the potential to replace fertilisers which cause nitrous oxide to be emitted (300 times global warming potential of CO2). Biochar therefore looks promising because it can store carbon, improve productivity of crops and substitute fossil fuels.

This potential is starting to be recognized, with the Australian Liberals making biochar somewhat of a centrepiece of its climate change policy response to Rudd's unambitious carbon reduction scheme.

More research needs to be done on biochar to assess its economic feasibility at commercial scale. Currently the biggest exponent of biochar is an Australian company called Best Energies. However, some incentive schemes are needed to promote biochar, since the economic gains of biochar is prima facie the same, or less than carbon intensive alternatives. For example, fossil fuel fertilisers can still be bought relatively cheaply and locking up carbon in soil does not of itself create value economically unless some sort of carbon credit is given for every tonne you lock up. In fact, more value can be created by burning the biomass to generate electricity.

It is also of paramount importance that biochar doesn't affect existing land-use the way biofuels did, and still does. I am much more in favour of biochar from agricultural waste and organic waste than biomass...

But this does look to have potential under the CDM or the voluntary market, where credits can be generated for every tonne that is avoided from release into the atmosphere from a BAU scenario. Again, some economic analysis is required to find out how lucrative it is to generate CERs or VERs using pyrolysis and selling it in the open market. The professors were definitely looking for dissertation students.