he first-of-its-kind data highlights biochar’s potential to scale carbon removals as a win-win solution for people and the planet.
Biochar can potentially remove up to 6% of global emissions annually – the approximate equivalent of 3 billion tonnes of CO2 or the total emissions of 803 coal-fired power plants in one year.
Biochar also has a minimum removal potential of 10% in over 25 countries, concentrated in Africa, South America, and Eastern Europe, and can potentially reduce carbon emissions by over 30% in Eswatini and more than 20% in Malawi, Argentina, and Ghana.
The greatest carbon dioxide removal (CDR) potential – rests with the world’s biggest emitters, including China, the United States, Brazil, and India, who can chart a pathway for sustainable emissions reductions through biochar.
WASHINGTON, Oct. 11, 2023 /PRNewswire/ — Ground-breaking new research shows that carbon removal solution biochar can play a significant role in global emissions reductions at the global and ational levels. The ancient farming practice can help countries mitigate climate change threats and decarbonize at scale while also adapting to the effects of climate change and unlocking economic and social benefits.
First developed by Indigenous communities in the Amazon thousands of years ago and now a rapidly expanding global industry, biochar is a material created by heating organic materials — such as forestry and crop residues — that would otherwise release emissions when decomposing. By converting these materials into biochar instead, carbon is locked for centuries to millennia. When used as a soil amendment, biochar can improve soil health and increase water and nutrient retention in soils, helping to both mitigate against and adapt to the effects of climate change.
Published in the peer-reviewed journal Biochar and commissioned by the International Biochar Initiative (IBI), the research quantifies biochar’s CDR potential across 155 countries, with net removal potential on anational and global scale, assuming a sustainable supply of no purpose-grown biomass quantities. Currently providing the vast majority of delivered carbon credits, biochar is an affordable, scalable, and readily available solution that, unlike other CDR methods, also provides environmental and social co-benefits like improved soil health leading to increased crop yields.
Story continues