What does this mean?

Immediate impact

It means that biochar is by far the most mature and available technology for carbon removal. While much of the purchased carbon removal by 2023 was done through so-called "pre purchase agreements" or "futures", biochar has the ability to deliver immediate effect. As soon as the biochar is produced, carbon is stabilized and thereby removed from the air. The permanent storage in soil is done to secure the irreversibility of the removal.

The hardest part is done by nature

Where the hardest part for other technologies is to actually capture the CO2 from the air, biochar is the result of a unique interaction between natural processes and technology: plants and trees are responsible for carbon capture. By photosynthesis, carbon is removed from the air, to build biomass in green plants. This carbon, is by pyrolysis (heating with little or no oxygen) of bio waste, stabilized as biochar.

The carbon that used to be in the air, may now be stored in the ground for hundreds of years. Each kilogram of biochar is equivalent to removing about 3kg of CO2. How do we know?

Verified and certified negative emissions

Biochar was first recognized as a Negative Emission Technology (NET) by the IPCC in 2018. From then on, several high quality certification standards has come to life. The most well known focusing solely on carbon removals are puro.earth and Carbon Standards International, followed by veterans like Verra.

These standards set verified methodologies for a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of the production process, and the analysis of the biochar, to see how much carbon and CO2-equivalents each tonne of biochar consist of.

Tangible result

As a tangible climate product, you may hold the carbon in your hand. Not for the holding as an activity in itself, but this way, biochar give you the opportunity to follow your climate impact from cradle to grave. You may know where it came from, and know where it ends it journey.

Carbon stablized in biochar, mixed with fertilizer

Carbon storage as soil improvement and climate adaptation

In addition to all this, biochar has several soil improving effect where it is placed. It contributes to climate adaptation, increased microbiological life and soil porosity.

As a physical product, that do not react with soil, water or air, it is also geographically flexible. We can in other words store your carbon where you like. By this, we introduce the last moment of this three article series: