A guest blog by DarkBlack Carbon
DarkBlack, a UK pioneer in the production of biochar and the creation of premium carbon credits, explores the benefits of the black stuff and pitches a future model for farmers.
The release of IPCC report on climate change has focused attention on both the immediacy and the scale of the threat we are all facing. And not before time. What the climate cognoscenti have understood for years, even decades, has had to percolate through layers of ignorance, scepticism, and misinformation that have served to delay action and reinforce complacency at the personal, corporate and state levels.
The trouble is, now that almost everyone accepts that climate change is a real and present, existential threat and that we need to reduce levels of atmospheric greenhouse gases – handily wrapped up as ‘carbon’ – not so many people have a clear idea about what they can or should do beyond ‘reducing carbon emissions.’ There’s a groundswell of willingness and desire ‘to do something’, but the what, where and how are still poorly defined. This is compounded by the inevitable rivalry between the advocates for various approaches and techniques, each of which is competing for the limited (but growing) funding and support available to scale their favoured solution.
And let’s not be coy about this, finance is the critical factor. Grants are limited and, particularly at the moment, while government may be increasingly vocal about climate change it’s also short of cash. So, corporates will have to play a leading role, but the infrastructure that will enable them to invest with confidence is still in its infancy and the whole field is dogged by a lack of transparency and reliable verification.
This, in turn is holding back the growth of a mature, respected carbon market: the essential component that will allow corporates to get involved, support initiatives and, of course, offset their own unavoidable emissions.
All of this could lead you to conclude that, even though the planet is at code red, there’s not much you can do until the boffins and bankers get their act together. Not true. One solution is here already: biochar.
A BlackBird in the hand
Farmers and landowners will have heard a great deal about biochar in recent years – it’s been championed as a silver (black) bullet in some quarters. At DarkBlack, we wouldn’t go quite that far but, as the UK’s first and only large-scale commercial producer of biochar, we are well placed to espouse its benefits and highlight some of the current, but surmountable, obstacles to its wider adoption.
In the field of nature-based carbon-removal solutions, one of the main challenges for carbon reduction at scale is the delivery time: new projects can take years to move from concept to execution and impact. Biochar, by contrast is an almost immediate solution, capturing carbon from the day a unit becomes operational.
What is biochar?
Biochar is produced when biomatter is heated, but not burned, in an oxygen-depleted environment. This process, known as pyrolysis, stabilises the carbon, locking it in for hundreds of years.
At our unit near Market Harborough, we pyrolyze woody waste collected from council-run tree surgery and green waste collection. Other sources of biomatter are available and many farmers and landowners will have a plentiful supply of suitable waste.
What are the benefits?
The process of making biochar – pyrolysis – is the most immediate benefit since it locks in the carbon in biowaste and prevents its release back into the atmosphere in the form of carbon dioxide and methane through burning or decomposition. This means that, unlike carbon reduction techniques, which typically focus on reducing how much more carbon we emit, pyrolysis and biochar actually remove carbon.
When fully optimised, our unit – BlackBird I – will be capable of producing enough biochar to remove 3500tCO2e per year.
This carbon capture provides the basis for the creation of high-quality carbon removal credits (CORCs). These are certified by puro.earth through a rigorous testing and verification process to meet internationally recognised standards – providing the corporates that purchase them with assurance of their quality and authenticity, thereby addressing the financial and reputational concerns about ‘greenwashing’ that have dogged the sector for years.
Downstream benefits
Critically for farmers and landowners, the benefits of biochar production do not end at the beautiful black chips that drop out of our pyrolysis reactor. Biochar can be used as an additive to industrial products such as concrete and asphalt or, more relevantly, as a soil enhancing additive. When activated by mixing with compost, biochar has been shown to amplify soil carbon sequestration, thereby significantly boosting soil yield. But, beyond this, by improving soil water retention, biochar helps to reduce water and therefore chemical run off, which has a powerful impact in reducing waterway pollution. By extension, if less of the fertilizer runs off, more of it stays in the soil, which means that farmers don’t need to use as much of it in the first place. Since fertilizer production is one of the single-most carbon-intensive activities on the planet, any reduction in its use has to be seen as a big win. Sustainability purists would go a step further and argue that, when paired with low or no-til and other regenerative practices that build soil organic carbon sequestration, biochar addition can obviate the need for chemical fertilizers entirely.
Overall, when used as a soil enhancing additive, biochar has been shown to amplify the original carbon capture of its production by as much as ten times – and that doesn’t include the savings in emissions (and cost) from reduced fertilizer use.
What are the obstacles?
Hardware – biochar reactors are in short supply, but our experience has highlighted a number of ways in which reactors can be made to assemble and operate more simply and at lower cost.
Education and finance – the number and scale of potential backers for carbon capture projects is building every day but education and communication about both the science and the markets remains both limited and confusing. Meanwhile, carbon markets still lack the infrastructure to build credibility and confidence.
Reliable supply of biowaste – this is an issue both of the quality and volume of supply, and of the additionality of the carbon capture. Biowaste has to be pure. For example, treated wood from construction clearance and domestic collection is unsuitable. More importantly, for an initiative to qualify for a reputable carbon credit certification scheme, operators have to be able to show that what they are doing is different – additional – to what would otherwise have happened.
The potential for biochar is enormous and we are currently only scratching the surface: biochar can and, we believe, will become a significant tool in the UK’s overall carbon reduction strategy. DarkBlack’s BlackBird I plant is now operational, and we are in discussions about further units already. As more pyrolysis reactors come on stream – potentially including mobile units and waste collection schemes – we see this technology offering farmers around the UK the opportunity not only to cut their fertilizer costs and boost their yields, but also to support their own net zero journeys.
In the meantime, if you’re in the Market Harborough area and you want to see and feel some biochar, maybe even take a tonne or two away with you, let us know – we only make it, it’s up to landowners to harness biochar’s downstream benefits.
