Biochar - Untested And Unproven - Or Political Football?

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3rd February 2009, 05:45pm - Views: 644





Biochar – untested and unproven – or political football

Press Release: 03/02/09


The global warming challenges we face have been linked to our addiction to digging

“black stuff” out of the ground and using it to fuel our growth and prosperity. Biochar

technology offers society the opportunity to pay back this historic greenhouse burden

– by taking renewable resources, converting them into “black stuff”, or biochar,

which can be beneficially sequestered in the ground. The good news is that biochar

sequestration actually adds value by increasing soil productivity, so can contribute to

ongoing prosperity rather than coming at a huge cost to society. 


The federal Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry - Tony Burke – stated that

“There are many different technologies that can be used to try to deliver [carbon

sequestration in soil] and biochar is one of them. It’s untested, it’s unproven.” He

expressed that the opposition party’s enthusiastic support of the technology is “a long

way in advance of where the scientists are at”. 


The fundamental premise of the stability of charcoal in the environment is well

established in many scientific disciplines. For example, archaeologists routinely use

carbon dating of charcoal created tens of thousand of years ago. 


So what is the view of prominent scientists on biochar’s potential as a climate

solution? Professor James Hansen - Climatologist and head of the NASA Goddard

Institute for Space Studies – has published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal that

“Biochar […] can be used to restore soil fertility while storing carbon for centuries to

millennia […] [and] could provide a CO2 drawdown.” 


Veteran environmentalist and accomplished chemist, Professor James Lovelock, when

interviewed for New Scientist on solutions for our time concluded that “There is one

way we could save ourselves and that is through the massive burial of charcoal.”


In the Ecopolis documentary made for Discovery Channel, Daniel Kammen – Nobel

Prize-winning Professor of Energy at the University of California, Berkeley

concluded that “Finding places to store carbon - to sequester it - is a rare commodity

that pushes biochar into the lead and makes it a clear winner”.


In Australia, Evelyn Krull, soil carbon expert at Commonwealth Scientific and

Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) says “biochar technology is a research

priority for us because it can be an opportunity for Australia to help mitigate carbon

emissions and assist agriculture to combat decline in soil health”. Environmental

scientist and Australian of the Year 2007, Professor Tim Flannery, has been a

champion of biochar technology for several years. Flannery has said “I think this is

one of the most exciting and important new technologies out there, in terms of

stabilising our climate” and that “it does seem to look too good to be true but I've

looked at it from every angle and I fail to see the fault in the system.”


On the ground, NSW Department of Primary Industries (DPI) has been conducting

biochar trials for Australian agricultural systems since 2006. This work has been

assisted by the supportive NSW State Government. Senior scientist Dr. Lukas van

Zwieten says “We have scientifically demonstrated that biochar products can increase

soil carbon levels, offering an opportunity to restore the carbon levels of Australia’s

depleted soils”. “Our trials have also shown improvements in crop productivity and

soil health, which is obviously a win-win situation for farmers”.


The challenge facing researchers in Australia is that the proposed exclusion of biochar

carbon sequestration from the governments Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme

(CPRS) means there is no incentive for the industry investment required to establish

the demonstration biochar production facilities that are necessary to measure and

verify the actual greenhouse balance across the process and have enough biochar for

large-scale, scientifically verified studies. 


The biochar process has several advantages in terms of greenhouse accounting. As a

controlled and engineered production process the monitoring and verification required

for greenhouse accounting is straight forward compared with other accounting

challenges such as growing trees. Professor Johannes Lehmann of Cornell University

published in Nature that “Biochar is a lower-risk strategy than other sequestration

options, in which stored carbon can be released, say, by forest fires, by converting no-

tillage back to conventional tillage, or by leaks from geological carbon storage”.

Lehmann has done extensive work on the Terra preta soils of South America that

provide a biochar sequestration case study set up by pre-Columbian Indians centuries

ago. 


The technology required for the large-scale production of biochar is far from

unproven. The production of charcoal is in fact one of the oldest industrial processes.

Traditional charcoal making however does not usually include energy recovery and

therefore does not have a promising greenhouse balance. Biomass gasifiers, for the

production of renewable energy, have also been in commercial operation for decades

and can be used for biochar production. Their traditional focus on energy production

via a gaseous fuel (syngas) results in only a mineral ash remaining in the solid form,

with little stabilised carbon or char. The greenhouse challenge has brought the

attention of engineers to optimising the co-production of charcoal and bioenergy, in

effect incorporating these two concepts to provide a true climate change solution. 


Proof of concept of the technology has been achieved right here in Australia, with

pioneers BEST Energies Australia and NSW DPI winning the 2007 United Nations

Association of Australia (UNAA) World Environment Day Prize for this

achievement. BEST Energies has a pilot plant in NSW which has successfully

produced biochar and ‘carbon-negative’ green electricity from a range of waste

organic material. They have designs for commercial systems and could start

construction tomorrow given the required investment.


Inclusion of the technology as an option for greenhouse gas mitigation in the CPRS

will provide a clear message to the investors required to roll out this technology.

Inclusion in the scheme will also ensure that the technology is subject to the

accreditation and auditing regulations associated with it. This will ensure that any

offsets generated are verified and will allow industry the opportunity to implement the

lowest cost offset options with the greatest flow on benefits for Australian businesses.


Contact: Adriana Downie, BEST Energies Australia

adriana@bestenergies.com.au






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