Finger Lakes Biochar

Listening to a webinar on Agriculture & Climate Change Adaptation hosted by the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, I was at once enlightened and yet disheartened.  Sadly biochar received nary a mention. To fill the void, allow me to present my perspective on how biochar can help not only with climate change adaptation but also with climate mitigation.

Climate Mitigation

Mitigation comes in two basic flavors: reducing and rebalancing.  The vast majority of interest and investment seems to focus on reducing; i.e. lowering current emissions of various greenhouse gases (GHGs). There are many, many ways to do this but using less energy and/or using cleaner energy (e.g. solar, wind, geothermal, hydro, etc.) are amongst the most common recommendations. Reducing is absolutely critical to mitigating the worst forecasts, but it is far from sufficient. Rebalancing is perhaps even more important. Rebalancing means shifting excess atmospheric CO2 back from whence it came: terra firma (I will leave the discussion on ocean sequestration and release to others).

Biochar can help on the reduction side in a variety of ways. Renewable energy in the form of heat, which can be converted into electricity, is created during the production of biochar. Sometimes a portion of this heat is used for drying feedstock prior to carbonization, but the vast majority of it is available to displace fossil fuel derived energy.

Further on the reduction side, we can look to fertilizer use, especially Nitrogen (N), which comes with a particularly heavy carbon footprint both on the energy-intensive production side, but even more so on the application front.  Excessive N use is rampant around the world as farmers desperately try to maximize annual yield in soils long since exhausted of inherent nutrients. Microbes convert nitrogen into nitrous oxide (N2O) which is 300x more devastating to the climate than CO2. Biochar blended with either organic nutrients (e.g. manure, urine, compost) or with synthetic fertilizer can reduce the amount of fertilizer needed as it provides a bonding structure for the nutrients that slowly releases them and prevents unwanted leaching into groundwater or as GHG into the atmosphere.

Biochar can also reduce methane (CH4) emissions from at least two significant sources: bovines and rubbish. The world’s 1.5 billion cows as well as other livestock belch out an alarming amount of CH4, a GHG 25 to 80 times more potent than CO2. In the US, livestock is the 2^nd highest source of CH4 emissions after Natural Gas. Research has shown that adding biochar to livestock feed can materially reduce enteric methane emissions as well as provide other health benefits to animals.  It can also serve as a low cost delivery mechanism for getting biochar into soils (via manure). Similarly research has shown that biochar used at landfills, either as daily cover or as part of a capping material when landfills are retired, can also reduce CH4 emissions.

Biochar can also reduce significantly emissions by diverting organic materials from going to landfills, which represent the 3^rd largest source of CH4 emissions in the US.  Carbonization minimizes biomass volume by 75 – 90% depending on the production parameters.  In the right circumstances, this can reduce transportation tremendously and it can also prevent CH4 from being generated at landfills in the first place.

On the rebalancing front, biochar can help mitigate climate change in two critical ways: by boosting photosynthesis and by interrupting or massively slowing down the normal carbon cycle. Using biochar to plant trees or crops has shown that plant survival and growth are improved which can boost overall photosynthetic activity.  The CO2 absorbed by plants is stored until they die and then it normally decomposes back into CO2 and re-enters the carbon cycle.  However, if the trees or plants are converted into long lived products (e.g. furniture) or carbonized into biochar, the natural carbon cycle is interrupted.  When biomass is carbonized, up to 50% of the carbon absorbed during the tree or plants lifetime is converted into stable carbon and if the resulting biochar is put in the soil or embedded in other long-lived products (e.g. building materials), it will not return to the atmosphere for many centuries. This is an example of what is commonly referred to as carbon sequestration.

Adaptation

Adaptation focuses on strategies that can be employed to deal with the impacts currently being experienced as a result of climate change. A growing number of adaptation strategies are being employed from relocation of populations impacted by rising seas, to changes in planting schedules and/or crop types, to improved drainage or more successful integrated pest management.  As with mitigation, biochar can help adapt to the impacts of climate change in a variety of ways, a sampling of which are provided here.

Climate change is wreaking havoc on global food security. Droughts, floods and storms are both more common and more fierce. Increased heat, disease and land degradation are amongst the other threats to food security, compliments of climate change. Biochar can help improve crop yields, plant resistance to pests and pathogens and retain water longer in areas prone to droughts, all of which will help to build more resilient food production systems. Biochar also helps reduce the amount of water needed for irrigation which, in an increasingly water constrained world, is critical.  Some research is showing that it can help to recharge and filter ground water supplies which can lead to healthier crops and improved human health.

Storm water management is becoming enormously crucial especially in flood-prone areas.  Biochar is being successfully used as a strategy to manage urban stormwater from Seattle to Stockholm, but can also be used by farmers in drainage ditches or potentially in lieu of expensive tiles, and by gardeners and home owners in rain gardens.

Fierce and frequent fires such as those swallowing up Southern California at the moment threaten lives and landscapes. Drought is turning trees to tinder and invasive species bring unwanted biomass which also increases the risk of wildfires. Biochar made from beetle-kill pines is underway in places like Colorado and teams of volunteers in Oregon have been thinning vast amounts of brush to reduce fuel loads (more info here).

Communities that have suffered devastating impacts of hurricanes or monsoons could, as I’ve noted before, greatly benefit from biochar in many ways.  From dealing with debris to generating desperately needed power to remediating toxified soils and replanting ravaged perennials, biochar can help rebuild and regenerate.

Some biochar scenarios straddle both mitigation and adaptation. These include its use in regenerative agriculture which focuses on building soil fertility and increasing biodiversity; reforestation or afforestation; and urban agricultural practices such as green roofs and tree establishment.

This is far from an exhaustive accounting of biochar’s benefits when it comes to climate change mitigation and adaptation but it should provide the reader with an overview of biochar’s unmatched usefulness and versatility.

NOTE: This blog post has been cross-posted in the Biochar Journal.

Early in September I had the privilege of leading a biochar study tour to Stockholm, Sweden on behalf of the IBI. I have long been enamored with the Stockholm Biochar Project (SBP) for many reasons and was thrilled at the opportunity to see up front what I believe is one of the first of what will hopefully be many replicable biochar ‘bright spots’ (as the Heath brothers call them in their book ‘Switch’). The crux of the project is this:  convert urban yard and garden waste into heat for the district heating system and biochar for urban tree planting and storm water remediation.

What makes the SBP different from so many other biochar production scenarios is that, through years of trial, error and persuasion, a small but dedicated team has succeeded in building a strong, consistent, non-seasonal demand for biochar. Having proved the various benefits of using biochar in structured soils [which consists of: 1 part biochar, 1 part compost, to 6 parts gravel by volume], the city has been importing biochar from different biochar vendors in the UK and Germany by the truckload for a growing number of urban landscaping projects for several years. While initially intended to improve urban tree survivability, an unintended but enormously valuable consequence of using gravel based, biochar-enhanced structured soils was the significant reduction in storm water sent to the city’s wastewater management system.  Not only has this reduced municipal wastewater management costs but urban perennials including trees and shrubs, are thriving as compared to those that were dying in heavily compacted soils. Assisted with grant funding from winning the 2014 Bloomberg Mayor’s Challenge, the city took the next step in creating a closed loop biochar production facility to replace the imported char with char they can produce from underutilized biomass.

Urban trees provide a variety of eco-system services estimated at more than $500M in value for a megacity.  Amongst other benefits these benefits include: improved air quality and human health, production of oxygen, CO2 storage, wildlife habitat, reduced heat island effect and energy usage and improved property values. Not having to replace urban trees every decade that die due to compaction issues can also translate into a huge savings for cities.

The Bright Spots approach looks at entrenched problems through the lens of: let’s find out what is working to solve problems and how we can do more of it using specific tasks and behaviors that support new directions. Replicating biochar production is no longer the problem for scaling the biochar industry.  More and more examples of biochar production are popping up all across the globe using different technologies and different biomass for biochar production.  The challenge, as I’ve said before, is replicating the consistent, preferably local, demand for biochar at a price that makes biochar production financially viable. What the SBP folks have done is identify and educate a large prospective end user for biochar, i.e. urban landscapers, on the benefits of using biochar. While not all cities are likely to value urban trees the same way that Stockholm does, especially those located in drought-prone areas, many cities do place a high value on trees and thus provide funding for tree & perennial planting and maintenance.

Many cities have been or will be forced to plant new trees to replace those afflicted by the ever increasing number of invasive insects such as the emerald ash borer which is decimating ash trees or the Asian long-horn beetle which is responsible for felling maples, box elders and willow trees across the country.  Many cities, especially coastal cities, are also desperately trying to figure out how to reduce flooding which has been exacerbated by the perpetual pursuit to pave combined with rising sea levels.  Using biochar enhanced structured soils can help with both of these.  Planting trees in these soils has improved tree survivability, and some research is beginning to show that planting trees using biochar in soils can even help fend off certain pests by enhancing the thickness of leaves.  It can also help to significantly reduce flooding, which after seeing the devastation in places like Florida, Texas and Louisiana, could be worth billions in averted rebuilding costs.

Given all of that, doesn’t it sound like it is time to call up a few folks  responsible for planting trees at your local municipality to schedule a time to chat with them about tree planting and biochar?

Increasingly I am fielding calls from larger and larger companies expressing interest in diving into the biochar world.  What they all want to know ‘Is this the right time?’, which prompted me to put together my perspective of the biochar industry’s current SWOT.  This is based on frequent discussions with other biochar consultants, current producers, technology vendors, researchers and potential investors. It’s not meant to be exhaustive by any stretch, but rather it can serve as a high level view of those factors pushing and preventing the industry from growing. [Note: this is predominantly a US view, but is probably not too far off for other parts of the developing world.]

Although this chart makes it seem like the weaknesses outweigh the strengths, that is not how I see the current landscape.  The most interesting thing to observe these days is that there are certain policy initiatives, albeit mostly at the state level (or regional in the EC), that may be driving carbonization of biomass faster than the oft-dreamed of holy grail of biochar acceptance on the carbon markets might have.  Though many folks were, and in some cases still are, convinced that until or unless biochar becomes an accepted offset product, the industry would languish, I don’t subscribe to that particular philosophy. The carbon markets are still not all that huge, [though they are growing in some cases e.g. RGGI and CA], and the price of offset products is still rather pitiful (e.g. <$15/ton CO2e in CA and way less under RGGI). The reality is, for better or for worse, that biochar is still not an accepted offset (or better yet sequestration) product on any mandatory exchange. And yet the biochar market seems to be growing at a nice clip, though it is very hard to get solid numbers.

What could be better than carbon markets you ask? Bans! Barring organic waste from landfills may soon become a boon for the biochar production.  As landfills fill up, and NIMBY prevents new landfills from opening States are looking to restrict what gets sent to their existing landfills in an effort to extend their life expectancy. NY is considering joining a growing number of other states that have at least some type of requirements for organic waste diversion. Diversion options can be expensive depending on how far away a waste generator is to a food pantry, livestock farm, composting, AD or other facility which will accept them.  Certain types of organics (e.g. sewage sludge, yard waste) do not lend themselves to too many current diversion options.  In these scenarios pyrolysis (or gasification) is a scalable solution offering a variety of co-products (e.g. heat, electricity, biochar) which can offer an attractive option to increased tipping fees.

At some level this restriction of organics to landfills is in its own way an easier to administer carbon tax.  By eliminating the ability to choose what has traditionally been the lowest cost but highest emitting disposal option, it incentivizes waste producers to find alternative waste management processes which will also (likely) reduce their carbon footprint, at least the portion related to CH4 emissions from organics in landfills + transportation of waste. Done right the waste generators could also use the heat (or electricity) produced during carbonization, thereby reducing their reliance on fossil fuel energy.  In many cases, they might also be able use or sell the resulting biochar to further improve waste management economics.  A few examples might help elucidate this thinking: 1) coffee roaster: instead of landfilling the chaff, they can carbonize it and use the heat for the roasting process; 2) tofu manufacturer: instead of landfilling the wet okara byproduct they can carbonize it and use the heat to dry the okara then use the biochar to filter the whey effluent; 3) wastewater treatment facility: carbonize sludge or digested sludge and use biochar to filter effluent.  There are many such examples that could work, though those generators with a more homogeneous waste stream have a huge advantage over those that have a very heterogeneous one (e.g. supermarkets, etc.) since that kind of biomass doesn’t make for high quality, consistent biochar and can run havoc on production equipment.

For more info on the current state of the biochar industry, you may want to listen to a recording of  Webinar from earlier this week on the Past, Present & Future of IBI and the Biochar Industry given by myself and Tom Miles, the Chair of IBI’s Board of Directors.

In May New York State announced a Methane Reduction Plan (MRP) aimed at reducing methane (CH₄) by 40% by 2030 and 80% by 2050.  Going beyond the Federal EPA’s MRP and even California’s plan which largely target only Oil & Gas, they have focused on the 3 primary anthropogenic sources of CH₄ in the State: Landfills (58%), Agriculture (22%) and Oil & Gas production and storage (11%). To help achieve the targeted reductions 25 separate actions have been proposed; 11 for Oil & Gas, 9 related to Landfill emissions and 5 for Ag.

I blogged about biochar & CH₄ reduction potential more than 3 years ago and fortunately the research on this topic has continued apace. While biochar could potentially help mitigate certain negative environmental impacts of fracking, most of the research has focused on filtering the toxic water that results and not on reducing emissions. I confess this is not an area that I’ve delved into with any enthusiasm so there may be additional benefits related to using biochar on the fracking front.

Landfills and agriculture, however, are another story.  Biochar could potentially play a role in four of the nine proposed landfill related activities which have been split into two separate categories: 1) diverting organics to help reduce future emissions (#12 – 14) and 2) reducing current emissions (#15 – 19). While there is a heavy emphasis on diverting to food banks and anaerobic digesters, this isn’t always a viable option given distances to facilities nor is all food waste viable for either human or AD consumption. Carbonizing food waste may be a much more attractive and CH₄ (not to mention other GHGs) reducing option. The focus on reducing current emissions is largely on CH₄ reporting & capture but #17 goes beyond that to ‘identify best practices, in conjunction with evaluations of potential revisions to regulations, to reduce CH₄ emissions and diminish odors). Utilizing biochar on landfills, either for daily cover or during the capping process, has shown promising results both from a CH4 and odor reduction perspective.  Recent research has shown that blending char with soil, versus using layers of pure biochar, improved removal efficiency. Other research suggests that biochar pore sizes may not be small enough to remove CH4, so more research is definitely needed.

But it is the agricultural front that I believe holds the most promise for biochar mitigation strategies. The NYS plan has articulated mitigation strategies for manure management (#20), enteric emissions (#21), monitoring & reporting (#22 – 23) as well as soil carbon sequestration (#24 – 25). Claudia Kammann, a fantastic biochar researcher from Germany, and 14 others recently published an (open source) article on “Biochar as a tool to reduce the agricultural greenhouse-gas burden – knowns, unknowns and future research needs”. This paper looks at the current state of biochar research in terms of N2O and CH₄ soil emission mitigation potential, the impact of using biochar as a composting additive on CH₄ & N2O emissions, and its use in animal husbandry in terms of both its use as a feed additive and carbonizing manures via pyrolysis. While the mechanisms behind biochar’s ability to mitigate GHG emissions are still under review, the most relevant characteristics for biochars to optimize different end goals still needs significant research.  Overall though, there are enough promising indications to warrant more funding for this type of research, especially in light of the fact that GHG mitigation is only one of the potential benefits of using biochar.  Soil health, yield improvement, reduced water needs and other potential benefits can also be realized in many scenarios.

The research paper presented some ‘back of the envelope’ calculations for adding 1% biochar (see Table 1) to the daily feed intake of the global livestock population as a means of sequestering carbon. As the carbon does not biodegrade in the digestive track but is excreted in the manure, nearly 400 Mt/yr of CO_2e could be sequestered in this manner – and that doesn’t even begin to address the potential CH₄ mitigation potential from enteric emissions or N2O emissions from manure or the improved animal health or the accelerated feed conversion impacts!

I would encourage all five of the entities [Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC), Department of Public Service (DPS), Department of Agriculture & Markets (DAM), Soil & Water Conservation Committee (SWCC) and Energy Research & Development Authority (NYSERDA)] tasked with working on further refinements and funding proposals to review the potential of biochar to not only help reduce emissions, but build a thriving biochar industry in NYS that can help resolve other issues that are contributing to environmental degradation.

In preparation for an upcoming workshop on Biochar From the Ground Up to be held at The Farm in Summertown, TN this week I have been experimenting with the use of biochar and different materials. While I’ve been researching biochar and cement for a few years and have blended char with other synthetic and organic materials, I haven’t had much exposure to plaster.  Then I stumbled upon lots of different plaster and stone materials from my father’s former orthodontic offices and asked him to school me in the ways of making different plaster and stone composites. Once I had mastered that, adding in a bit of biochar was a no brainer.

To kick things off I made a 100% plaster sample and a 50/50 biochar plaster sample (see below) first blending the dry ingredients thoroughly before adding water.  (Biochar particle size was <1/20”.) A few things are already interesting to note.  The exothermic reaction that normally occurs with plaster during curing seemed completely absent with the biochar plaster which  didn’t heat up at all.  Also the volume of the blended model is smaller so the swelling which typically happens with plaster seems to have been minimized.  And finally the weight of two samples was significantly different.  When finished the all plaster sample weighed 5.2 ounces whereas the biochar plaster was 3.4 (it lost .2 ounces overnight), 34.6% lighter – not a bad thing when it is used in various building materials (e.g. gypsum drywall).

Water adsorption was pretty substantial in all biochar composites.  Using a silicon mold to make cups, this was fairly easy to test and observe! It would be interesting to test various other properties of this composite such as fire, mold and sound resistance, insulation, hardness as well as curing time. To be continued!