Finger Lakes Biochar

Late last year the Board of the International Biochar Initiative (IBI), of which I am honored to be a member, decided it was high time to get ambitious when it comes to biochar production.  We set a goal to help try to build an industry capable of producing 1 G [i.e. one billion metric tonnes] of biochar within the next 50 years.  This is what’s known in the business world as a BHAG – a big hairy audacious goal.  Given the recent alarming elevation of both temperatures and atmospheric CO2 levels, we felt that it was time for the biochar industry to step up and show the world how and how much biochar can help rebalance carbon.

Since that time the notion of how to reach that goal has been on my mind a lot.  There is an ever increasing variety of new technologies coming on line that can carbonize all sorts of organic material including fast and slow pyrolysis, gasification, hydro-thermal carbonization, low tech kilns, and even micro-wave pyrolysis (just attended a ribbon cutting event on one of those today at RIT). From small, nearly free kilns, to multi-million dollar industrial furnaces, the industry finally seems poised to pyrolyze plenty of organics.  The ‘how’ is no longer the constraint to reaching 1G.

The ‘what’ still needs to be identified and quantified, at a global, country, state and local level.  After a very (and I stress VERY) preliminary look at just a few potential feedstocks, I’ve come to conclude that 1G is not going to be a problem based on available supplies of unloved biomass.   The world has more than enough organic matter that is currently being landfilled, burned or otherwise underutilized which, if carbonized, could bring many benefits beyond rebalancing carbon (as I’ve recently blogged about here).

Let’s look at the residues from just 2 of the world’s biggest crops: rice and corn. According to the USDA Foreign Agricultural Service, preliminary reports show that global milled rice production in 2016/17 was 481.5M tonnes. Rice has two distinct residues: rice straw and rice husks. The amount of rice straw produced (by weight) as compared to the amount of milled rice produced is variable from 1.0 – 4.3 the weight of milled rice.  Much of this straw is burned in-situ so that farmers can get on with the business of planting their next crop, even if this practice is banned!  Nowadays, thanks to small, mobile kilns like the Kon-Tiki and Warm Hearts Trough, carbonizing rice straw can be done in fields which would not only reduce air pollution but would prevent enormous amounts of CO2 from becoming airborne. If, by some miracle, we were able to carbonize all of this straw it could produce from 157M – 675M tonnes based on a typical yield for this particular feedstock of 32.6%.  The rice husks could generate an additional 44M tonnes of char based on typical yields from this particular feedstock.

Corn is an even more ubiquitous crop with an estimated 1,065Mt produced per year.  As with rice, corn also has two residues; stover (stalks, leaves, etc. which weighs about the same as the harvest corn) and cobs which weigh about 15% of the corn.  Corn residues amount to 1,225Mt of underutilized biomass which could produce more than 350Mt of char.  Combined these two crop residues alone could potentially sequester more than 400Mt of carbon (or 2.776Mt of CO2e), and that is only looking at the carbon in the char and excludes the reduction in GHG that the production of biochar could provide if heat is harvested or electricity produced, or soil or manure-generated GHGs that could be lowered if biochar is sequestered in soils or added to manure compost or lagoons.

Obviously carbonizing 100% of these residues is a highly unlikely scenario, but this does show that the world produces enormous amounts of biomass every year that could be used to generate not just biochar but heat and/or electricity at the same time. Crop residues are but one big bucket of biomass.  Forestry by-products (thinnings, culling, branches, sawdust, papermill waste, etc.), excrement (both human and livestock), urban waste (e.g. municipal solid waste, industrial, etc.) and invasive species also provide enormous opportunities to help us reach and surpass 1 billion tonnes of biochar.  Imagine how far that could help countries (or apparently in the US it will be up to States, Cities and companies!)  reach their Paris Agreement goals.  Once the collective ‘we’ sharpen our pencils and calculate each of these available categories, I suspect biochar could be one of the best tools for not only reaching their climate mitigation targets, but also helping to improve soil resiliency, food security, while also providing renewable energy and boosting local economies.  

The 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) adopted by the United Nations are focused on ending poverty, protecting the planet and ensuring prosperity for all by 2030.  These are what are sometimes called BHAGs (Big, Hairy, Audacious Goals) in the business world. Big aspirational goals are exactly what is needed to reimagine, reinvent or in some cases retrofit our precariously unbalanced world.

Wide scale adoption of the production & use of biochar could materially help achieve at least 12 of these goals.  While I could (and may!) do a full blog post on each of the SDGs that biochar could influence, here is a brief overview of which goals biochar can impact with some examples of how it is already working:

Goal #1: No poverty – making biochar from crop waste & blending with animal urine & manure decreases the need for subsistence farmers to purchase off-farm fertilizers and boosts yields.  Farmers in Nepal improved yields by more than 100%

Goal#2: Zero hunger – growing more food, especially in poor soils with increasingly erratic climate, reduces hunger. (see Nepal example above)

 Goal #3: Good health & well-being – using biochar in soils can immobilize certain metals and toxins and reduce the need for chemicals in soils.  Using biochar to filter storm water can reduce E.coli and other bacteria. See the Warm Hearts example in Thailand on replacing chemicals in agriculture with biochar.

Goal #6: Clean Water & Sanitation – using biochar as a low cost water filtration medium can reduce negative impacts of unfiltered effluents.  Carbonizing sewage sludge is a way of reducing volume and immobilizing toxins.

Goal #7: Affordable & Clean Energy – a growing number of biochar production technologies can be used to produce heat and/or electricity and/or syngas.

Goal #8: Decent Work & Economic Growth – carbonizing underutilized biomass which is commonly burned in open fields creates economic opportunity for farmers and other rural inhabitants.

Goal #9: Industry Innovation & Infrastructure – new biochar uses include building materials (e.g. concrete, bricks, asphalt) and other composites. Incorporating biochar has been shown to improve various properties of both concrete and asphalt thereby extending the potential lifespan of the materials.

Goal #11: Sustainable Cities & Communities – biochar has been shown to benefit storm water management, green roofs and urban tree planting. It could also be used to remediate urban brownfields.

Goal #12: Responsible Consumption & Production – converting waste into biochar and using the char to displace high carbon footprint or non-renewable or expensive materials will lead us away from a linear economy to a more circular one.

Goal #13: Climate Action – this would be a long list starting off with the ability to stabilize carbon pulled out of the air via photosynthesis.  Biochar production can also displace fossil fuel based energy.  Fed to cows or added to landfills or manure slurries it can lower CH4 emissions. The list goes on…

 Goal #14: Life below Water – adding biochar to soils can reduce nutrient leaching which is responsible for significant eutrophication around the world. 

 Goal #15: Life on land – reclamation, remediation, restoration are all ways that biochar can improve life on land!

Recently someone claiming to have ‘spent years’ researching biochar wrote a rather lengthy blog/report about his viewpoint on the prospects for biochar as a viable solution for climate change mitigation. I won’t mention the title as it seems to have changed a few times, perhaps in an effort to garner further attention.  Not surprisingly though there has been some interesting conversation within the biochar community about said article. One of the main complaints was that the site that published the article never allowed comments, which seems a little thin-skinned.  That is a tactic that our new President and certain cabinet secretaries have been using, so perhaps it is becoming something of a new norm to discourage dialogue.  To quote a frequent late night twitter abuser – ‘SAD’! 😉

But what is so glaringly obvious to anyone that is actually inside the industry and has actually spent a lot of time on biochar research or at least reading broadly and deeply on the topic, is that the article is so out of date.  If it had been published 2 – 3 years ago, the last time the author seems to have spoken to anyone in the industry, some of what he wrote would have been more relevant.  However in the past few years much has changed in the world of biochar. Not only has the breadth of biochar research expanded in terms of a wide variety of potential new uses and a better understanding of the nuances of biochar production and the best ways to use it in different growing systems, but also the number of companies that are beginning to produce thousands of tons of biochar is increasing every quarter.  Hardly what I would consider a ‘standstill’ for the industry, which is what the author claims

Another odd point is that the author chose to focus almost exclusively on biochar’s ability to sequester carbon for the long term, something for which he claims there is dubious research – without really backing that up with recent peer reviewed citations.  He claims that for the past several years there has been an effort to get biochar included in carbon markets.  By and large that effort ended a few years ago and while it is true that it was unsuccessful, the fact of the matter is that the whole carbon market industry has been something of a disappointment.  Prices per ton of CO_2e on the carbon markets have been hovering around $12 in the U.S.  whereas the lowest price per ton of biochar is around $600 (and often much higher).  Needless to say with such a huge disparity, the carbon market side of things doesn’t really get too many folks in the biochar world all that excited these days, at least not in the U.S.  That is not to say they wouldn’t welcome additional income, but this is not something a lot of people are actively working on.  The focus has been on documenting biochar’s value proposition in agriculture, in remediation, in wastewater treatment and other areas.  There is acknowledgement that biochar doesn’t make economic sense everywhere given the current price, but the quest for identifying viable markets has definitely moved beyond carbon markets.

This article also resuscitates an old yarn claiming that the only way for biochar to make a significant impact in rebalancing atmospheric carbon, is if substantial food bearing land is converted into growing biomass for carbonization.  I call a hearty BS on that one. To clarify what I mean by BS, I am talking about not just bull manure, but all human and animal excrement as just one stream of waste that when carbonized, has the potential to significantly reduce current GHG emissions related to large animal and human poop processing AND sequester carbon at the same time.  I’ve blogged about lots of other waste that is currently either being out-right burned (e.g. crop waste, invasives, etc.), or landfilled (e.g. food waste, green waste, etc.) or otherwise underappreciated that can take us a long, long way before ever entertaining the needless notion to convert land used for crops into land used for biomass.

Then there are claims that ‘in many instances’ the biochar industry has teamed up with the Oil & Gas industry looking for ways to mitigate their emissions or remediate the harm they have done to eco-systems. Many compared to what? I have seen or heard of very little financial investment from the fossil fuel folks (FFF) outside of funding some academic research. Of course the FFF are beginning to hedge their bets into renewables and other climate friendly technologies, so it would be naïve to claim they have invested nothing, but I would love to hear more facts instead of unsubstantiated innuendo.  This type of hack job reporting is what has made Fox News famous. 

It is disappointing to see biased articles like this that purport to have spent so much time on an issue, when it is clear the goal was headlines and not balanced reporting. Balance requires following all the threads, not just the titillating ones.  Those of us ‘in the arena’ as Teddy Roosevelt so famously said, with our faces marred by dust (perhaps he meant biochar?), are hard at work trying to find the bright spots of where and how and for how long biochar can help rebalance carbon while also helping humanity to adapt to the ominous perils of climate change, toxified soils and other environmental calamities.  It is far more productive for all of humanity to build something up, rather than to tear something down.  That doesn’t mean we can’t admit to the flaws and failed attempts to build an industry, but we need to focus on what works and how to replicate it quickly, economically and sustainably if we are to have any chance of making an impact with biochar. 

While doing some research recently a collaborator asked if biochar fed to dairy cows impacts the quality of milk.  Given that the purpose of adding biochar to livestock feed is to bind toxins and other nasties, it seemed logical but as I sought an answer to the question, the research on this particular question seemed scarce.  However I did find a few tantalizing bits of research which showed how much healthier goat and dairy milk was when goats and cows were fed charcoal.  But before I get to the good news, let me tell you about a not so fun guy (or fungi) that can often be found lurking in different animal products.

Aflatoxins: not a word that is commonly bandied about outside of academia, but aflatoxins can have a major impact on crops and critters, including us!  Aflatoxins are naturally occurring products brought to us by fungi.  They can be generated in soils or silos when too much water is left on crops. They are most commonly found on corn and cottonseed, but may also be found on soybean and distillers grain.  When eaten by livestock a certain amount of it can carry over into eggs, milk and meat.  When consumed by humans, high or long term exposure can lead to all sorts of health issues from convulsions to cancer.  In the US alone, the economic impact of aflatoxins on the dairy industry is estimated to exceed $200M per year!

And now to the good news. The goat research out of India showed that supplementing charcoal in the daily diet of dairy goats (1% DM), significantly reduced the amount of aflatoxins that showed up in their milk without any reduction in milk quantity or nutrient quality – with the exception of Zinc which increased. The two charts in the above graphic show just how much aflatoxin levels can be reduced (T1 is control; T2 is sodium bentonite and T3 is charcoal). The control milk had nearly five times as much aflatoxin as compared to the milk from the char chomping goats! The dairy research done in Italy showed that certain types of activated charcoal could reduce aflatoxin carry over in milk by up to 50%, an improvement of other common binders which topped out at 36%.

Unfortunately in the U.S. the use of plant derived charcoal is not currently permitted as a feed additive for livestock that are expected to enter the human food chain (i.e. its ok for cats but not cows!). In 2012 the Association of Animal Feed Control removed charcoal from their approved list of feed additives citing concerns of possible chemical or heavy metal contamination.  Thankfully researchers and biochar producers are working closely with the Food & Drug Administration to demonstrate that feeding biochar to livestock is not only safe, but highly beneficial.   Researchers and producers in Germany have also been working with regulators quite successfully to demonstrate the multiple health and economic benefits of feeding char to hogs, hens and Holsteins!

Remember those ridiculous word problems in math class that were laughably convoluted and unrealistic? What if we were to inject a bit of reality combined with some consciousness-raising into word problems. We could get kids motivated to solve real world problems and oh, by the way, learn a little math in the process. Here are some possible word problem examples (which of course involve biochar!) based on a recent New York Times article about air pollution in India.

India produces 34 M tons of crop residues, mostly rice and wheat straw.   Although illegal, most farmers burn the straw as this is the quickest way to clear fields for the next crop. Instead of burning, which contributes significantly to air pollution, farmers could carbonize these residues, creating a valuable nutrient carrier, biochar, which can also sequester carbon in the soil.  Solve the following problems:

1. 800 liters of straw will yield 200 liters of biochar.  What is the yield as a percent?
2. If all farmers in India produced biochar instead of burning crop residues, how many tons of biochar could be produced?
3. If straw char contains 36% carbon, how many tons of carbon could India create from crop residues per year?
4. A typical car emits 4.7 metric tons of greenhouse gases per year.  What is the equivalent in the number of cars, to the amount of carbon which India could create if all crop residues were carbonized?
5. A small farmer with 1 hectare is fined USD$38 for burning his crops.  Crop residues per hectare vary from .4 tons – 3.0 tons depending on many factors.  Assume Farmer A has 2 tons of crop residues and that one laborer who is paid $8 per day can harvest and carbonize 800 kg of straw in one day. Will the farmer be better off burning his crops or carbonizing them?
6. How much biochar will Farmer A produce? 
7. For every kilo of biochar produced, assume the farmer can reduce purchases of lime for his fields. (Lime is needed for fields that are acidic.) Lime costs $30 per ton. How much will the farmer save assuming a 1:1 ratio for biochar:lime.
8. What is the effective cost of producing biochar when labor and savings in lime are included?

The list of word problems could go on and on just for this single scenario.  The questions could even get more complicated for older students, but you get the general idea. Math word problems could be customized for different regions or for different problems which resonate with different cultures around the world. 

Maybe, just maybe, if we create a math curriculum focused on climate change solving math word problems, we could start turning negatives into positives….in more ways than one!  Kids could educate their parents on this new math, offering new solutions which will not only reduce air pollution and rebalance carbon levels but could also improve farmer livelihoods too!