Carbon removal advocates say US could vacuum up CO2 even faster with biochar

As the US pours billions of dollars into machines that pull CO₂ from the atmosphere, advocates of another technology, biochar, are arguing that the Biden administration is overlooking a "missed opportunity" to deploy large-scale carbon removal within the decade.

Biochar is an ashy material made from organic waste, produced as a fertilizer and a potential strategy to reverse past greenhouse gas emissions.

"Why it's important is that this material is known to resist degradation for hundreds of thousands of years, thus making it one of only a few commercially viable carbon dioxide removal methods," Thomas Trabold, a sustainability research professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology, said in a Nov. 21 briefing.

The National Academy of Sciences estimates carbon dioxide removal must scale to 10 gigatons annually by 2050 to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement on climate change, while also investing in other climate mitigation strategies, like renewable energy deployment.

A recent report co-authored by Trabold estimated that biochar production has the scalability potential to remove 2.65 billion metric tons CO₂e per year, or about one quarter of the volumes prescribed by scientists.

The research, published in the journal Biochar, comes as the US government invests heavily in another form of carbon dioxide removal, direct air capture (DAC). In August, the US Energy Department awarded a combined $1.2 billion to two large-scale DAC projects in Texas and Louisiana. The funding came out of a $3.5 billion grant program, authorized by the bipartisan infrastructure law of 2021, aimed at bringing the nascent technology to commercial deployment.

Congress provided further support for DAC in 2022 through the expansion of the 45Q tax credit program, which now offers developers up to $180 per metric ton of CO₂ captured with technology. Biochar projects are not eligible for the incentives.

"Of course, that is a missed opportunity," Wendy Lu Maxwell-Barton, executive director of the advocacy group International Biochar Initiative, said during the briefing.

As of November, biochar projects made up more than 90% of delivered credits for long-term carbon removal, according to industry tracker CDR.fyi. To date, short-term offsets — generated by practices such as planting trees — make up the majority of the voluntary carbon market.

"Biochar is really one of the most advanced [carbon removal] technologies in the world in terms of being the most readily scalable to an industry level as well as having the lowest cost per ton of carbon removed," Maxwell-Barton said.

As for why federal legislation favors DAC, the reason is "hard to pinpoint," she added. "I do think that the industry is trying to be more visible to educate and advocate at the government level, both for legislation as well as policy and funding that comes aligned with that. And I think, frankly speaking, the DAC industry has done that very well."

Maxwell-Barton noted efforts by the US Biochar Coalition, a newly formed lobbying group, for support for the industry in the farm bill from the US Congress.

With newly improved methodologies for measuring the biochar's emissions reductions, the technology may also be taken more seriously by Congress, according to Wil Burns, co-director of American University's Institute for Carbon Removal Law and Policy.

Direct air capture was "probably one of the easiest at the outset to quantify, and so amenable to 45Q," Burns added during the briefing.

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