Biochar Brokers: 2009-11-08

How close is the U.S. to forming a plan to combat climate change? Will biochar be a tool used to sequester C0₂? Judging from what our top political leaders have been saying, I say soon and most definitely.

President Barrack Obama came out of a meeting recently with key European officials at the White House saying he’s confident that the U.S. and European Union can agree on a framework to solve the climate crisis before the summit meeting in Copenhagen this December. President Obama, European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso, and Swedish Prime Minister Frederik Reinfeldt have all agreed to increase their efforts as December approaches. "We discussed climate change extensively, and all of us agree that it was imperative for us to redouble our efforts in the weeks between now and the Copenhagen meeting to ensure we create a framework for progress in dealing" with the potential disaster," Obama said to reporters at the end of his meeting. [1]

Al Gore is perhaps the most influential climate change advocate and he’s already predicted that the U.S. will be taking big strides as we move forward as a planet to solve climate change. He’s even predicted with confidence that President Obama will attend the summit meeting in Copenhagen. Among his own efforts, the largest would be the release of his new book titled Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis. As a sequel to An Inconvenient Truth, Gore’s new book was written to shine light on the best solutions available to help in the crisis. “In addition to hosting these group meetings, I have engaged in a large number of one-on-one sessions with other leading experts around the world in an extended effort to find the most effective courses of action...One of the most exciting new strategies for restoring carbon to depleted soils and sequestering significant amounts of C0₂ for 1,000 years, and more, is the use of biochar [2]”.

Gore describes biochar in his book as “ a form of fine-grained, porous charcoal that is highly resilient to decomposition in most soil environments”. As a solution to climate change Gore wrote, “Burying biochar in soil replenishes the carbon content, protects important soil microbes and helps the soil retain nutrients and water. It also reduces the accumulation of greenhouse gas pollution by avoiding the releases that would occur from the rotting of the biomass on the surface, by sequestering the C02 contained in the biochar, and by assisting the process by which plants growing in the soil pull C0₂out of the air with photosynthesis”. As far as established biochar businesses go, Gore noted that Mantria Industries in Tennessee has built a commercial-scale biochar plant that sells under the band name EternaGreen™. Biochar Brokers Inc. is the world’s largest distributor of EternaGreen™ Biochar. [2]

With Obama redoubling efforts for a solution to climate change and Gore supporting biochar as the solution, it’s only a matter of time until a system is established with incentives for the global use of biochar. Gore notes that the principal barrier of biochar is the lack of a price on carbon, which would be resolved by the cap and trade proposal. After that’s in place there is no stopping biochar from being “ the single most important initiative for humanity’s environmental future”, Gore writes in big red text quoting Tim Flannery. [2]