The Benefits of Supporting Programs Utilizing Biochar Technology

By Adam Garnica

Through support for programs utilizing biochar technology such as the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves (“Alliance”), the United States has demonstrated a firm commitment to improving global food security and brightening humanity’s climate future. The Alliance represents a public-private partnership led by the United Nations Foundation that aims to establish a global market for clean and efficient cook stoves using biochar technology. The use of this technology is a novel response, and not only might it improve food security for developing nations, but it may also help mitigate climate change. As such, biochar technology may help facilitate innovative solutions to some of the world’s most pressing problems.
Biochar is charcoal that can be used for cabon sequestration, and it is produced through the chemical method known as pyrolysis. The process of pyrolysis converts carbon-rich feedstock—like agricultural wastes, woody debris, and other biomass resources—into biochar and energy co-products. These energy co-products include syngas (a natural gas substitute) and bio-oil (a type of liquid fuel and a source for electricity generation).
The widespread deployment of cook stoves that integrate pyrolysis (“pyrolytic cook stoves”) may allow members of indigent communities to utilize biomass to fuel their cooking needs. Additionally, the biochar and energy co-products produced from pyrolysis with the stoves may provide additional value. For example, the syngas and bio-oil may offset the energy demands of heating needs. Furthermore, the soil application of the charcoal-like, carbon-rich biochar may enhance crop yields, thus improving food security.
Biochar soil applications may increase crop yields by increasing soil-nutrient availability and improving soil-water retention capacity. By binding to vital nutrients for crop growth, biochar may prevent the runoff of the nutrients after heavy rainfalls, thus promoting greater nutrient uptake by the resident crops. Biochar may similarly bind, or absorb, water molecules, thus improving soil-water retention. Support for biochar use as a soil amendment also comes from the successes of pre-Columbian Amazonians who achieved increased soil fertility and improved crop yields after applying a biochar-like substance.
Another benefit of biochar is that it may stabilize in soils without significantly decomposing for periods ranging from hundreds to thousands of years. For example, Amazon soils still maintain the biochar-like substances that tribes applied thousands of years ago. Biochar may sequester carbon found in biomass, which otherwise would have naturally decomposed. Through natural decomposition, biomass releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere on the order of just a few decades. Hence, by delaying decomposition, global implementation of pyrolytic cook stoves utilizing biochar technology may indirectly mitigate climate change. The soil stability of biochar and its resulting carbon sequestration potential may vary according to such input variables as the selected feedstock (i.e., what type of biomass is pyrolyzed) and the specific properties of the amended soils. In any event, future studies should help scientists and policymakers understand what conditions can maximize biochar stability and optimally mitigate climate change.
In addition to international support forprograms such as the Alliance, the United States has also supported biochar technology through its domestic policies. For example, the Water Efficiency via Carbon Harvesting and Restoration Act of 2009 established both loan guarantee programs promoting biochar technology and biochar demonstration projects on public lands. This followed the 2008 Farm Bill, in which Congress listed biochar as a high-priority research and extension area. By supporting biochar technology at the national and international levels, our nation has addressed some of our world’s most serious concerns. Perhaps at some point in the future developing nations will have widely implemented biochar technology in the homes of their citizens. While those nations will have benefited from increased food security, humanity as a whole will have benefited from a more stable climate future.