Can Biochar Help Save the World?

On Earth Day, we looked back on a year in which James Cameron's Avatar, a film about environmental crisis and restoration, swept box offices around the globe. What if there were a real-life answer to help solve the real world problems of climate...

April 26, 2010 | Source: Huffington Post | by Ron Dembo

On Earth Day, we looked back on a year in which James Cameron’s Avatar, a film about environmental crisis and restoration, swept box offices around the globe. What if there were a real-life answer to help solve the real world problems of climate change, peak oil, and global food security? Would you want the leaders of the G8 and the G20 to know about it and endorse it? This Earth Day, The Huntsville Project launched to inform the global public about biochar, one of the most promising developments in our fight against climate change. At the new website, http://www.newcarboneconomy.info, you can find out about biochar and sign the petition.

The Huntsville Project is asking global leaders to support this important new clean technology. On June 25. the G8 will meet in Huntsville Ontario. Then the G20 will meet in Toronto on June 26 and 27. Sign the Huntsville Petition and help put biochar on the global agenda!

Biochar Explained Biochar is the modern version of an ancient Pre-Columbian technology invented by native Amazonian peoples to enhance soil fertility. A form of charcoal, it is created by pyrolysis – the burning of biomass, such as agricultural waste or wood, in low oxygen. The ancient source of biochar is called terra preta (prepared earth) in Brazil.

The first thing to know about biochar is that it is a way of removing CO2 greenhouse gas from the atmosphere for a very long time. The carbon from biomass, when pyrolyzed, can remain in the soil for hundreds or thousands of years. We know this because some of the terra preta soils of the Amazon are 2000 years old. And these ancient soils are still so fertile after all this time that there is an industry in Brazil to collect these soils and put them in bags to sell as potting soil.

Biochar is one of the few technologies that can take carbon out of the atmosphere. ‘Green’ technologies like solar and wind power reduce the amount of CO2 that goes in to the atmosphere, but do nothing to remove the carbon build up. Biochar takes carbon that has been captured from the atmosphere during the growing process of plants and trees and converts it into a soil additive, thereby storing the carbon in the earth. It has a number of advantages over other carbon removal technologies, such as geoengineering or coal power generation carbon capture and storage, in that it is proven, relatively cheap and can be widely applied. Biochar could potentially play a significant role combating climate change.