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Carbon removal by biochar: Evidence that changes the game
Animé par Harald BIER, Secretary-General – European Biochar Industry Consortium EBI
Sylvain DELERCE, Associate Research Director – Carbon Gap
Ueli STEINER – Carbon Standards International CSI
Hamed SANEI, Professor – Aarhus University
@europeanbiochar5417
@carbongap
@carbonstandardsinternation1833
Okay hello um so we’re a little late so I’ll try to we’re a little late so I’ll try to to speed up a little um and limit my part to the absolute minimum I’m Harold beer I’m Secretary General of the European biochar industry Consortium which is the European Association for
Biochar I’ve been here at the first uh event when uh they had the the first biochar Pavilion and Paul just told me back then it was eight companies now you see how much it developed so back then we were discussing biot Tru carbon removals in this CDR environment a
Little but it was just then there seems to be something that’s speeding up our markets but it was really at its infancy and that’s just four years ago and now we see ourselves at a totally different point CDR has really gained importance and BCR is well it’s just the one that’s
Uh realizing the most sales actually like the real the the realized carbon removals are over 90% um based on on biot truck carbon removal so coming from a point where yeah we knew that there was something that could remove carbon from the atmosphere and and and contribute to well basically be a
Climate service which could be monetized somehow um from a rather juvenile perspective to something now which has grown own which has professionalized and uh and developed tremendously exponential growth I’ve learned that it changes your reality every couple of months and this has happened now since
Uh since we first met a few times so now I’m really happy to be here with some of the great figures and uh people representing some of the main um uh associations and organizations of this field so we have um carbon Gap here here s San D um I
Have very I I really like carbon Gap we have very good relations because they just have this Tech agnostic approach what works what are good cdrs what is high quality carbon removal and they they really do a great job um in promoting that and and setting the
Boundaries somehow um he will he will start his presentation after that williner EBC was one of the first who had like EBC syn one of the first um organizations that had helped us monetizing um biot Tru carbon removals and setting a a framework where you have trust trustable trustworthy carbon
Removals and he will present how far they have come and then Hamed s we’ve been in contact since almost two years and he’s been working intensively in showing the permanence of carbon removal through biochar like biochar is permanence in the environment um through two Publications recent ones of greatest
Importance I would say for our sector so I will I will not uh talk any further I would leave the floor to Silva thanks for being here thanks Harold good uh morning everyone it’s a pleasure to be here thanks very much Aral for the introduction um and I
Understand that we are a little bit uh late so I’ll try to keep it uh to the point so uh thank you very much for uh being here um so in uh this session we are exploring how biochar as matured as AR all um described in his introduction and
I think overall the the CDR industry since 2019 we may say has really taken off um everything is growing uh we have more people more project more transactions all of this which is excellent news but of course it brings new challenges as well uh as things are growing and reaching another level of
Maturity so in this first presentation what I would like to do with you is to just step back a little bit from just biochar and look at where CDR is at right now uh because of course biochar is part of the crew and is leading the
Pack uh you could say as ARL was suggesting um and uh yeah have a look at this to look together at what’s comes next uh in this m maturing process okay this is working that’s excellent very quickly carbon Gap is a European NGO we focus on carbon removal
All kinds of carbon removal and uh our mission is to help accelerate the deployment of carbon removal capacities in Europe um with ambition but also with rigor uh which means that we are also very uh interested in looking at how things are done all right so let’s kick
Off um some context to start with uh with cop 28 uh We’ve had uh the global stock take and uh it was just another reminder of uh where we are at Now with uh the fight against climate change Global emissions keep Rising uh the remaining carbon budget is shrinking
And therefore our dependence on carbon removal to stabilize the climate is rising and all of these are bad news uh which is why they are in red uh as you can see the global stock take uh which was released and uh approved during come 28 uh identify a gap between the level
Of emission we are still having and the one we should have of about 20 to 23 gigatons per year by 2030 and the global emission have not yet picked um so you know this notion of carbon budget is a very important one um you know discussing carbon neutrality by
2050 uh does not really tells much about what has to be done actually the carbon budget is a much more powerful concept uh so so scientists have been quantifying this remaining carbon budget over time and of course it is evolving so starting in 2020 we had about 50 uh
Sorry 500 gigatons remaining that we somehow can spend um and it was actualized uh last year and it’s now only 250 gigatons approximately gigatons left uh to be emitted if we want to stay uh in line with the 1.5 uh climate objective uh so linked to this concept
Cep is of course the level of carbon removals we will need uh to achieve the stabilization of climate and again this has been Quantified in the last assessment of the ipcc uh released in 2022 uh and it is estimated uh to be between 5 and 10 gatons CO2 per year by
2050 uh the removal capacity we need to develop uh if we want to meet our goals that’s massive particularly compared to what we are doing right now uh and this is bottom left on this slide where the report state of CDR released in 2022 suggested that we are currently removing
About 2 gatons per year uh of CO2 but more than 99% of this is uh done by natural systems uh and so forest and natural landbased uh methods and only uh 2.3 megga CO2 per year are removed with permanent removals so we see the scale of the challenge and how
Uh these activities have to grow then another reminder uh not to to be um pessimistic but that’s the reality climate change is accelerating uh temperature are rising and you see how 2023 was kind of an outlier in this trend uh particularly over the summer and that means that has uh also impacts
On the systems and particularly the natural systems we intend to use as carbon sinks in this case you have a map of the French Forest uh with some of of them uh showing clear signals of a decreasing capacity to suck carbon out of the air and of of the air and some of
Them have already turned to be uh net sources and that’s a major issue and believe me that the government is right now struggling with this because it is actually threatening our goal of net uh neutrality by 2050 because this is the major the the main things uh the
Government has been uh betting on you could say so far so that’s a major problem um on the other side CDR as we said has been growing and is increasingly recognized as the third pillar of climate action um and it’s materializing as well uh numbers are growing in terms
Of sales number of tons deliveries as well and uh on the bottom part of the slide you have a little bit of a a photo show of 2023 uh this is the new plant of Net Zero in Brazil which I think is is one of the world largest right now in terms
Of biochar production this is the inauguration of uh the direct air capture plant of heirloom in the US heirloom is using a very different concept to capture CO2 from the air than what we are used to with climar for example this is uh planetary uh this company is piloting ocean alkalinization
In Conwell in the UK uh in 2023 this is uh a container and I mean the demonstrator that repair another deck company launched in 2023 uh moving their technology which is based on electrochemical deck uh to Ari closer uh to six than lower which are also good
News and this is a picture from uh ltos in the US where basal is being spread uh over uh crop fields to uh do enhan rock weathering uh so yes the industry is moving forward and that’s excellent and as I said in the introduction that comes with uh new challenges
So it means that if we want all this capacity that we are deploying to achieve a a a good climate outcome um and to be trusted as well we need to put in place uh a robust governance of these activities so uh there’s this question floating around uh which is you know on
The long run is CDR a limited resource that we should manage as a public good or is it an abundant resource that we can deal with much more like um a commodity and on the long run I would say the debate is valid but in the short
Term it is clear that CDR is a limited resource we said that in the beginning we have a very uh little capacities right now to remove uh CO2 permanently and that means that up until uh we have massive amounts of CDR or we have stabilized the climate uh we need to put
Very robust governance around this if we want to make good use of these limited capacities so it means that uh the use of CDR should be mostly targeted at compensating for residual emissions the small icons uh refer to something that maybe you’ve uh experienced this is a a
A huge rabbit hole and a very complex debate residual emissions how you define them based on what criteria so that’s an open question that is not yet resolved but we need to resolve it very soon because it is uh somehow cross cutting all the the climate policies so we need
To know what this res residual emissions can be and they can CDR can also be used to address Legacy emissions uh to restore in a way a carbon budget uh for us for other countries for other actors that will have a a harder time decarbonizing so um for that uh there is
A principle that is very important that we call the like for like principle and the idea is that if you’re compensating for a specific type of emission uh the the kind of the the yeah the type of CDR that you using for that needs to match the characteristic particularly if
You’re compensating for fossil emissions you need to use high permanence CDR so that in turns open all the debate about permanence that has been very active on biochar and evolving quite fast um but I guess the point of this slide is to say that yes the inherent characteristics
And permanence of CDR methods is important but that’s not everything that’s not enough uh we need as I said in the beginning to regulate somehow the use of the CDR credits if we want them to deliver a proper climate benefit so yes there need to be a like for like
Principle with the with the permanence but in between we also need a Continuum of mrv so that’s monitoring uh reporting and verification protocols to prove this this quality and then also liability mechanism to guarantee this uh quality over time and long long time uh and they
True proof is that some CDR methods are struggling not with the the permanent side and the I mean I would say the scientifically demonstrated permanence of their method but more the bricks in between you know how you demonstrate it one example can be um uh ocean alkalinity or en or Rock weathering
Where we know in theory and on paper This is highly permanent but how you demonstrate and quantify this is a huge challenge um and um the liability issue is one that uh I guess all the spectrum of methods uh under the carbon farming is struggling with biochar could that
Could also be a challenge for biochar uh in a way uh so just to highlight that uh we need this full Continuum if we want to have a proper uh governance of this um use of CDR and the use needs ideally to be registered uh and on Registries
That are accessible and Open Access so that the society can scrutinize a little bit what’s being done and how the units are uh transacted and used so uh some of these topics are been or are being addressed in under what is called the carbon removal certification framework
That’s um a policy proposal that is currently under negotiation uh at the EU level and that should be voted very soon it’s right now in trialogues and uh we’ve been very active on this file uh CSF is a very good uh step forward but still it has some
Limitations uh one is on Tech openness so that’s uh in the definitions uh we will see what comes out of the last steps but there were some issues uh about restricting a little bit uh the the methods that could uh somehow be covered by the CF and uh it falls short
Also on the uses this question we were just looking at on this slide I’ll move forward um so uh again as this sector is growing um governance is important but uh I guess we’ll discuss this all across the day but uh demand is also very important we need to
Design the a large scale sustained demand if we want the CDR project and companies to be able to keep growing and investing uh if the landscape and the visibility is not good uh investment will probably stop or uh uh slow and that could uh compromise the pace of
Development that we need so right now uh CDR is mostly um operated under the voluntary carbon Market which has very little rules uh and this Market is in transition right now there is a shift toward quality credits um mostly linked to different news that we’ve had in 2023
And problems of uh rigor and delivery on the on the voluntary carbon Market um and so this Market is here uh it is pulling CDR right now but there are some uncertainty is on where it’s going uh and how it will evolve and what will be the motivation for buyers in the
Future to keep buying significant amounts of CDR uh under this kind of markets uh another uh topic here is the topic of claims that companies can make when they buy CDR credits and this again is evolving very fast with a lot of regulations coming in uh particularly at
The EU level that will potentially change a little bit the the rules of the game so it means um we need to uh Gear Up demand and design other kinds of mechanisms to have more demand for CDR one uh uh the next step we could say is public procurement
Public procurement is uh when government purchase directly CDR uh with conditions of course and it has different uh advantages one is that it validates the recognition of CDR as a as a climate solution uh it acts as a standard Setter so it defines what goods look like when
You purchase CDR and it can also help to fund some CDR methods that are far far from being competitive right now on the market you have examples here um the US is moving very fast on this uh they already have an operating program uh of about $35 million and another bill has
Been uh filed at the beginning of this year to scale this up then there’s the question of compliance markets and mechanisms that will bring a whole lot more of demand as soon as things become um regulatory uh a lot more actors will have to buy CDR and that will bring a
Lot more uh demand uh online so here again this can takes very diverse forms it doesn’t have just to be a to be a market uh this can be requirements embedded in value change uh for example as they did in the state of New York with uh concrete okay I’ll move fast uh
And then yeah if you look long term then there is another question that needs to be addressed which is how we organize long-term demand more in a in a way of um of a waste management problem and and an eort sharing schemes okay last slide uh I guess uh something that we also
Need to keep in mind is that uh yes we need to push our methods uh forward demonstrate the value develop all the Continuum of um mrv and all these techniques but uh at some point they need to be some strategic planning uh the resources are finite uh and we
Experienced that with uh in preparing this study that you see here and that will be released at the beginning of March by carbon gap on France where we try to estimate the potential of the country to re to deploy CDR all kind of CDR and very quickly you bump into
Issues of limited resources with competing demands biomass is an obvious example and so if we want to make the most of these resources is uh there need to be probably some regulation it cannot just be free market uh otherwise we will run into obvious problems so uh just to
Highlight the importance of this strategic planning and take into account this uh trade-offs and competition for resources I’ll wrap up here uh the takeaways were just you know uh playing a little bit on the title of the session I just added this um question mark uh yes gamechanging evidences but again you
Have this old broader context that you need to keep in mind um CDR methods prove uh their value as I said but they need to do the whole chain of uh quality mrv liability uses and Registries um strong strong case for Corporation um that means the the the problem of demand
Uh we can compete on existing markets but we more than this we need to expand markets and demand so we need to cooperate to make the case and to because this compliance mechanisms come from uh Central Powers and and and governments so this needs to be uh
Advocated for and finally yeah uh this need of supervision and some coordinated growth so that we don’t just run into competitions and problems of uh uh fighting for the same limited resources um for different methods thank you very much I’ll stop here thank you Silva for this wonderful me on
Context I could I could just go on uh with the discussion because I have not down a couple of points U but I’m discussing with your colleagues already um thanks a lot so I will just pass on to Willie Steiner of carbon standards International who will tell us how they do that in
Practice yeah hello everyone Thanks haral for invitation uh to this presentation uh carbon standards what we are doing we develop uh biochar standards and standards for um carbon dioxide removal and um haral uh asked me to speak about the next generation of Standards let me start with biochar the next generation of biochar
Standards in our point of view allow to produce uh high quality product high quality biochar a certified biochar that can be used in different applications can be applied everywhere can be a soil application can be used in agriculture environment can be used in the industry uh should be used everywhere where biochar
Is generating an additional value I think this is the point let’s produce a product in a good quality and let’s add the product somewhere where this biochar carbon is generating an additional value our European biochar Standard is more more for the European Mar market and the world bowar certificate standards is
Outside of EU and EA countries applied at the moment with different quality classes what we need and on the production level is um the possibility to manage this I think it’s always a little bit uh based on our experience in the last 15 years it’s important to give
Um an instrument to the producers that it’s easy for them to manage the production uh manage the feed stock um production units systems and at the end even the stock of the biochar that they produce and it will be a part of the next generation of biochar standards in our point of
View okay let me jump in carbon dioxide removal uh standards because uh this is the important topic today the next generation of such standards contains the possibility and open the possibility to certify long-term carbon removals we will hear today what that means and also temporary carbon
Removals there are these two as we have heard just before uh these two options out there in the market and the next generation of Standards has to cover this of course there has to be Innovations in as example in the new are standard from from us that we will
Publish in the next weeks there will be um a cync efficiency label of the product um it’s a mix of um carbon and energy use uh of the feed stock and what ends up in the biochar uh we need Innovations in uh that’s clear but at
The end um the big difference is if it’s a longterm carbon dioxide removal or more a tempor for everyone okay it’s winter time snow sport is going on um we have a global seasoning sports team based on snowboards in the world cup and uh our um athletes they have snowboards
With biochar in global SE sync you see the logo over there yeah it’s a proof it’s biochar in it’s uh not only carbon neutral we created additional in the snowboard based on the carbon the nonoc carbon put it in and yeah we have quite good results and more and more athletes are
Interested in having such a board what’s this what kind of of carbon dioxide removal haral how long do you have your you are a snowboarder how many years do I am I’m I’m I’m probably the snowboarder who keeps the sports longer than anyone else so my current one
Should should be about almost 15 years good so I’m kind of the exception I guess yeah we will give you one then you have it 15 years it’s a 15 years carbon dioxide removal um um element uh that we can have on our planet and there are
Many others out there can be windmill propellers can be in the car industry uh all of this are temporary carbon dioxide removal and has to be part of such a new uh system of standards of course um in our standard family we have other standards really important on the planet not only biochar
Um for the industry also Artisan for the um developing countries Global sou production of biochar and also here we have the temporary part and the long-term part three as we have heard just before um replantations um again it’s an important topic also for that we have a standard
In our family and also here tree Plantation it’s a temporary one it’s a temporary carbon sink um we can of course measure every year uh everything what is in and it’s clear registration if you come back to the biochar and we have a soil application in this case uh then it’s fully clear
It’s a long-term um carbon syn we will hear more in the next uh presentation about Persistence of biochar how it has to be done but also in the biochar uh cing there is a kind of temporary part uh and the discussion about is ongoing how much is it but it can be registered
Properly and also sold as a carbon dioxide removal in the market if you jump into the next slide on the registration if we have a look as example on a tree plantations a replantation of um a new forest or something then what you see here is also a temporary carbon sync
Methodology it’s an increasing one it’s exactly the opposite than we then we have a look on the biochar the biochar is a little bit decreasing and here we have an increasing uh curve that means a temporary sink uh that is generated year by year can be measured properly how
Much carbon was stored by the tree by the forest that we have in the seyn unit and at the end it’s a cable um carbon dioxide removal value on the market let me jump in a short dilemma it’s uh not only a small one it’s a big dilemma in in our point of
View for the temporary carbon sinks for the temporary carbon dioxide removal isn’t really a market out there it isn’t because um we count in in long-term periods at least 100 or more years and that’s why carbon standard did develop a new methodology global cooling um it’s a meod methodology which
Includes all the temporary carbon thingss out there can be sold on an annual basis is um and it’s quite a new approach and you can uh get more information on our website about it global cooling probably the base of the new carbon znc economy I think it’s the final slide
From my side um in our point of view we have to think about more about planetary carbon recycling to reuse carbon as example first we start in the snowboard we will recycle it um we will use it somewhere else um and at the end everything what we remove from the atmosphere from the
Oceans um we can use somewhere we should reuse it like uh we have experts here in the from the recycling industry it will also be the case for carbon in our point of view in the next years and uh it’s our expectation that the most of all the
Seing out there in future will be temporary uh temporary based on because they are applicated somewhere in a product and will be recycled again but stay then in the recycle process also a carbon sink thanks for your attention it was a short overview about our biochar standards and carbon dioxide removal
Standards thanks oi thanks a lot and uh you even used a little less uh time than you had um so we now saw that the use use cases for example they determine the permanence so it it really does uh have have an influence and it’s it’s key to
Know what you use it for we also know that see that rigorous mrv systems are needed so it’s quite an effort to put all this technology and this this thinking behind it to kind of track uh these carbon removals and now we want to
Pass on to one of the well one of the really big questions I would say biochar persistence or permanence in the environment and who would you ask who would be more suitable than um you as a professor in geochemistry um a domain who has been looking at organic carbon since I don’t
Know a century and uh and lots of studies and lots of knowledge has been accumulated so please Hamed go ahead and Enlighten us yes we’ll try perfect okay good afternoon uh it’s great pleasure to be here thanks Harold for for introduction uh it’s a fancy title uh
But as a carbon geochemist uh the the real title uh that I like to present should be this why I like biochar and that’s really come down to uh to this and I can tell you why uh has something to do with the with the carbon cycle I
Teach carbon cycle in the in the AUST University and uh and uh when I look at the carbon cycle I uh I like biochar even more let me explain to you if you Google carbon cycle uh you know 90% you’re going to see something like this
A fancy Green Cycle with a lot of greens and nice things and then you see down there uh geology fossil and fossil fuels is always a culprit there and that’s how we mess up with the with the carbon cycle is basically Burning uh fossil fuels and uh and lime stones and
Carbonates for cement and auto and and our industrial activities so uh this is basically how uh how we mess up with the carbon cycle and the first solution it comes to mind is uh if we BAS basically open the Earth and put the CO2 back in the ground and that’s really Marvel of
Technology is happening now uh you know CCS you probably heard uh and that uses the phys physical trapping of CO2 by putting CO2 into the deep strata of of Earth and in this case CO2 is basically compact that it’s still a CO2 but we are betting on the on the you know hundreds
Of thousands of meters of rocks to to keep the the CO2 under the ground and there is a great science and engineering behind this and and it it works it works by keeping a large amount a scale amount a scalable amount of CO2 uh stored under
The ground but is this how Earth uh EST store or remove the CO2 what what does actually Earth do does it use the physical trapping for that I’m going to show you more realistic aspect of the carbon cycle so we got actually two carbon
Cycles one is in a top that is the green nice carbon cycle that I showed you in the previous slide this is a carbon in a biosphere basically carbon in the ocean atmosphere permafrost soil organic carbon all the things that we know uh it’s it exist in the
Biosphere uh uh there is a nice quantity of carbon cycling in the biosphere about 47,000 Gaton of carbon the annual to Millennial time scale is required for carbon to to cycle in the biosphere but down there we have another cycle which is carbon cycling in the geosphere so this is much larger carbon
Pool about 80 million gigaton of carbon and the cycling here is much longer is a multi-million year time scale these are like limestones sedimentary rock organic matter coal oil and gas all of these that that we know and that’s how we mess up with the with the carbon cycle by
Releasing this into the biosphere so the question is how does the carbon goes from this shter scale biosphere to the geosphere is it a physical transferring the answer is no is actually there is a a layer in between that’s a surface of Earth is a thin skin of the earth like a ocean
Surface like soil uh just anything on the surface and the process is a transformation it’s called biogeochemical trapping the carbon is chemically or molecularly or biologically is transformed into the geosphere not by physical action of moving carbon in there is simply on the surface by gradual Pro process carbon is
Gradually becoming more and more stable and is more preserved and then eventually the biosphere processes are no longer able to degrade or cycle or or alter this carbon so it’s only the geosphere processes are capable of doing that that is how carbon a large quantity of carbon through the geological time
Scale is transferred from biosphere into the geosphere but I’d like to open up this this uh biogeochemical trapping or this transformation a little bit more it’s very simple it’s two simple processes CO2 in biosphere could either uh use the process of mineralization I know a lot of you heard about this and
Becomes a carbon mineral that’s inorganic carbon trapping the other method is organic carbon passway way uh not as a popular word but believe me that’s a word it’s a mization it’s very much same as mineralization it produces car carbon merals what are these processes in the process of mineralization is a chemical
Weathering you heard of it silicate weathering or carbonate weathering process of mization is the organic carbon maturation is how the organic carbon become carbonized it becomes enriched in carbon or the process of carbonization the end product of these two for carbon minerals is carbonates like limestones and for carbon mcals it’s a
New world is inertinites it is the type of organic carbon that is the most stable in the sedimentary rocks in the earth’s cross so the the main purpose of this process is to bring CO2 in a biosphere and convert it to the most thermodynamically stable form of carbon to stay forever to
Stay in the geosphere so this process is responsible for 64 million gigaton of carbon in the inorganic Pathways and for the inertinite is responsible for 15 million gigaton of carbon so these are not a small numbers we are not sitting only with the carbon on the surface we
Got significant amount of carbon and amazing processes taking place as we speak in the geosphere and that’s how the carbon is being stored but how does it relate to biochar so we’re probably interested of this organic carbon passway as you may guess and let me open up this
One well the biosphere conversion to inertinite is happening in a two ways one is as I said organic carbon maturation or a slow carbonization so if this is a Surface so as the organic carbon is buried it goes through various processes which we call it diagenesis catagenesis and
Metagenesis and that happens through the long uh process and essentially all the volatile carbons are being released and the degraded organic matter is eventually converted to the inertinite which is the most stable form of organic carbon the question is what does happen to the molecular composition of biomass is basically it
Becomes aromatized it becomes condensed the molecules become very uh fortified it becomes very strong and that’s how inertinite look like it’s a very refractory uh molecule that that is not uh uh breaking down in the biospheric process well we do have a shortcut for this process where we could get the CO2
In a biosphere and convert it D directly into the inertinites oh it’s not happening there no no you oh I need to do it there sorry I thought it is electronic but okay I use this one anyway uh this process of shortcut happens in
Nature by uh by Charing by you know in a wildfire we see that that natural Wildfire or geological wildfires they do produce something similar to what we call it biochar and these material if they reach high enough temperature and high enough molecular stability they are found in a all sorts
Of uh sedimentary rocks not only coal but virtually any rocks Shale mud Stones mud rocks any rocks that you could see that and we see them hundreds of millions of years sitting there quite happily so so uh the other process is is being done synthetic so is a pyrolysis
Pyrolysis would would imitate the same things and and if it reaches enough temperature and it’s it is done purely and and and correctly the end result is the inertinite and uh and it basically works in the same way as the slow carbonization so now we’re following a rapid carbonization but the end product
Is something that is the most thermodynamically stable form of carbon and this is the question now so if we are looking at a biochar as a carbon dioxide removal so and the main question is the is the carbon Storage security or carbon permanence we have a very nice
Established Benchmark for that and that is the inertinite which which that’s how Earth does it and the question really has to be is the biochar equal to inertinite have we reached to the molecular uh structure and composition that is equal to inertinite and for that we tried recently to answer these questions
Answer the benchmarks by writing you know 80 Pages paper which is uh which is most of it is actually textbook book material but we also studied about 64 biochars from industry in order to look at the differences between the inertinite as a benchmark and the industri biochars and I take a couple of
Slide to show you what we found one thing is uh we know that as the pyrolysis temperature increases the molecular automatization and condensation increases this is well known it’s nothing new and and by structuring and ordering of the organic molecules the random reflectance the reflectivity of the organic molecules
Increases this is the parameter that can be measured very readily and it has been going on since 90s you know people know these things very well so by measuring the random reflectance we know that we are at the higher stage of the aromatization and condensation and The Benchmark is the
Random reflectance of 2% we call it inertinite Benchmark or ibr 2% so anything above this 2% line is inertinite and this is not only me saying that this is a a science many decades old that we know based on a numerous geological observation that anything above the two person is per
Definition inertinite and I don’t have to translate inertinite to you know that they call it iner for the reason and I guess this is the last slide this is the summary of all the industry biochars that we looked at and on the Y AIS is a random reflectance and
In the x-axis is amount of hydrogen it’s kind of similar to hydrogen to carbon ratio but we call it hydrogen index and The Benchmark for uh inerting at is this area and you could see overwhelming majority of the industry bioart are comfortably fall in the category that we could call them
Inertinite they’re in fact pure inertinite you could use them as a geological standard to demonstrate inertinite and that’s really good uh uh good uh you know uh results as far as the biochar concerns the rest also also may not be Pur in aite but they have substantial amount of inertinite within
Them and that brings uh this notion that why I like biochar so much because as I explained to you it imitates the natural processes by making biochar and using the pyrolysis method we release energy and we leave behind carbon as a storage and that’s exactly what the the actual
Carbon cycle do converting the the organic carbon from biosphere into the geosphere that is how it works and it’s a generous way of using carbon we use the energy and we leave behind something for the nature and this is what I usually tell my students we started messing up with a
Carbon cycle long before fossil fuels it was when we started making fires because in the nature we rarely have process that uh you know combust the entire carbon into the CO2 usually the processes are mostly biological processes occasionally we have wildfires but those are not really full of oxygen
They’re oxygen depleted in most cases so the processes usually leave know generate energy but leave substantial amount of carbon behind but we’ve got really good at it and we now able to uh combust the entire carbon and pump it as a CO2 into the atmosphere and that is why pyrolysis and pyrolysis
Energy and biochar becomes important in my opinion because it’s a corrective step towards sustainable carbon handling and this is really why I like biochar and uh and I can end it here and I’d like to thank all the co-authors of that big paper that I mentioned lot of the
Students and lot of intelligent people that I have a pleasure working with them and of course ebi Geological Survey of Denmark and AUST University thank you thanks a lot Hamed um so I I have asked you so many questions already this is why I would just leave the room um
Two questions to all three pres presenters um to you please go ahead if you if you still are capable of asking questions Lu thank you thank you very much thank you to all the people in that panel very interesting super interesting I I have a question for Professor sane uh this is
Of course a super interesting angle to uh measure things and uh I was wondering do you think this is enough for the industry and for the liability of selling uh credits from from biochar from removals uh is that enough or do we need something what do you need more if
Not I think uh I think the question of permanence in biochar is a big distractions for other important thing such as you know the yield toxicity all other things that is related to the uh application of biochar in so I think if biochar uh is qualified as inertinite
Which most do and it’s very easy to do that it’s very easy to measure and certify I think that’s it we should move on and try to look at uh applications of biochar and all other things that you mention so this by itself for permanence
Uh is enough to me but by no means is enough for other applications of the biochar in terms of toxicity yield all other things uh but for permanence I think we should really move on as quickly as possible because I’m not talking controversial science I’m talking uh a science
Geochemistry uh about uh you know Century old and these are well anded things we can uh recognize and quantify and and understand inertinite in the same way that we can tell mineral of carbon it’s not a mystery we know what is inertinite and we know what is carbon
Minerals Well if it is is it is then we should move on please yeah sorry to hijack the question from the room uh I have a provocative follow-up questions on this to uh Professor s so you explained that we find in nature we find inite in sedimentary rocks shells and all these
Formations does it means that we have to bury biochar to achieve the same impact no because uh virtually all the biomass were on the surface at some point so a lot of inertness that we see in the in the rocks of 100 millions of years they were on the surface they were buried
Gradually some of them they’ve been cycling in a biosphere on the surface for thousands of tens of thousands of years see this is my question I turn it around if we say that inertinite which is basically most biocharge are if we say iner degrade in biosphere we have to be prepared to
Accept that no organic carbon would ever make it to the to the geological rocks it would not be possible because that’s the most thermodynamically stable form of carbon and if you tell me that processes on the surface of Earth are so potent are so aggressive that they would
Virtually combust everything to CO2 then why should we have any organic carbon in the in the Earth cross where we have 15 million gigatons of that so it’s just a really a question about the carbon cycle so burial would uh I mean if you bury it in a uh let’s say 2,000
3,000 M of course uh there won’t be much bacterial activities going on it would help but you really have to go below 2,000 M to make a big difference because we know up to 2 kilm 3 kilm bacteria could happily could happily function I’m looking in at the audience
In order not to hijack the next question that we have to hi sorry uh follow-up question so if the permanence of the the barart is forever why the current verification methods will only classify bioch chart as 100 years plus not a thousand years permanent storage like some of the other CDR
Options tough question sorry my answer is I don’t know but I let Harold Harold say yeah it’s it’s kind of a difficult one to answer but I think the the person closest to it is sitting on the the other [Laughter] end yeah thanks for the question James
And of course the scientist is sitting over there um I think always if we develop um new systems new Industries new business here on the planet we always have to be a little bit careful uh how we Implement that um we all of us we know that that application
Of biochar on the soil level or as animal feed product can can create huge additional value um at the end we have the possibility to increase soil organic carbon by application of biochar as example in compost and for us it’s wonderful and thanks um to Professor sane for all this
Work that you are doing uh until now and I think this uh uh is the short answer the short part the scientific evidence uh of the different biochars out there with soil application was not so clear that we could say okay in each case is
95% that’s why we are also a little bit on the on the safe side of everything and if these scientific proofs uh will get real uh also from the science uh out there from the different scientists then we still can also increase the the part and value of carbon sinks in our
Registries and just to to add on to this thanks um I of course you have to be conservative and and I know the 100 years question that was that was there because people were asking what is the most relevant time scale um to mitigate climate change now we have an an tool to
Finally look into biochars and not just use it at this material like it’s this black stuff that has somehow been carbonized because they also different processes to carbonization there’s also Tor affection and I I bet you would have a difficulty differentiating if you look at a torrified piece of wood or a
Carbonized like pyrolized piece of it it might look quite difficult it diff it might be quite difficult to differentiate those two so two things once we can we can now look into the different fractions of of biochar and Hamed has classified them into four but you could even Define them in in more
Maybe 15 or so I think you said and the other thing is um what is biochar so now we have or H has I have done nothing we sent some samples but we’ve sent some representative industry biochars like what is the state-ofthe-art what are we just producing not what is possible to
Be produced but what is like a a random uh um sampling of biochars that are currently produced within the industry by you by those those people just in the back um and and this is a difference from what has been analyzed before this a it’s a tremendous difference actually
So before if you look at anything that has somehow turned black because someone exposed it to heat makes a difference if you do that or if you look at actual biochars that are being produced and used currently in industrial processes and not forest fires and not taction not
Someone who who dug a hole in his backyard and produced something and then sent it it’s a bit it’s exaggerating right but um this this variety now needs to be defined clearly analyzed and this is possible and I think there was a question can can I just add it quickly
Because I think this question is important and indeed the problem is uh very much related to a mistake that we keep doing and this mistake is that we talk about C methods as one thing so B one thing BS one thing Dax one thing totally wrong and we need to now start
Differentiate between the different uh kinds of biochar that you can produce and also maybe it’s okay to produce a low permanence biochar for certain uses you know uh if you are to compensate uh biogenic emissions for example totally okay so I guess the future is in a future where uh people can produce
Whatever biochar they want but then they have to prove the the share of the high permanance fraction and that’s fraction they can sell it as a high permanence and the rest they sell it low permanence so I think that’s very important in all the conversation we have also with uh
Policy makers that they understand that there is a huge diversity within the CDR methods same applies for Dax for example you discuss direct air capture and people think of the first generation Concepts like carbon engineering super energy intensive Burning uh mean to run the process and all this and now we are
Already to the third or fourth generation where there’s nothing uh I mean it’s like passive you don’t need any uh heat so you have very different concept so it’s very important to break things down so that we know what we’re talking about hi there uh Adam Samuel from
Capture uh thank you guys for the talk so far um my question to you is do you think as an industry we have a responsibility to do more uh real world demonstrators you talked about if permanency we can get over this hurdle um we we might look at things like
Toxicity do you think we do enough demonstrators because we have a lot of academic evidence at lab scale but not necessarily at field scale in the UK we have maybe 200 tons of biochar being spread on land we’re miles behind I can start um I think that’s a very good
Question and my answer would be yes and more demon please uh for different reasons I think uh demonstrators are very helpful on a technical perspective first to acquire data optimized process and all this but you we all know that there’s also a massive like looming issue of public acceptance of all these
Techniques people have become for some reason very uh reluctant to any kind of climate Solutions actually that’s becoming very tricky and so and people are struggling to understand what we’re talking about when we talk CDR well bio probably is the the easiest one to get
Right but um I think uh just for that it’s it’s really important to have demonstration that people can visit journalists can visit and people can realize that it’s it’s okay uh it’s just a container uh you know emissions are not toxic or whatever but they need to
To see it to touch it to smell it I think it’s super important so and and I I think this this issue is looming I guess uh I I said because uh everybody knows it’s there uh we haven’t found the right solution to address it so we are
Pushing back but that’s that will come back you know this year next year but not further than this I don’t know if any wants to add yeah exactly I’m I have the same opinion I think we we are ready for all these explanations and if you look at
Out there on the market at the moment then um I’m hesitating a little bit to to to to think that we will be able to scale the market as as we expected and how we should scale it from the climate perspect perspective as example if we think only about soil application I know
How Farmers think it’s it’s not so easy to convince them to use a product uh but there are so many possibilities out there as example in Switzerland a guy is is is building a house now based on on biochar concrete with biochar everywhere and hem straw in the bricks and at the
End this building will be climate positive this is the point can even be certified as a carbon sync and and that’s what we can demonstrate with our products and let’s do it now because we have to scale up this market and not to think about the problems that we have in the
Background wonderful if you want to see some some real life um uh implementation of biot Tri based products I’ve seen just walking around here someone who put it in concrete I don’t know if it’s Casta cono a loock I think it was at at their booth and uh Bart uh my friend
Over there is just 3D printing with biochar based polymers so there are different uh time spans of of uh of permanence I would say of use of these materials but they are existent and we as ebi we are in discussion with the EU Commission on potential delegated acts
Uh after the crcf and then of course in in their interest it is also to have some something graspable something tangible so Urban environments would be a lot more interesting actually than rural environments where nobody can actually see what’s going on so Furniture concrete Furniture um we’ve
Been discussing this you can 3D print maybe even the furniture in cities and then you have Urban trees planted in biochar based substrates and all of this this makes it graspable for people and this should be the approaches so absolutely right I think we can we need to stop putting this debate about
Permanence aside as it’s becoming clear now where where this where this is going and refocus on the use cases and on scaling of this of these applications of biot because we can do so much good and that’s it from do we have more time it’s going to be the last
Question Christ maybe or do you have someone so these are going to be the last questions okay thank you very much and thank you for the presentation uh I have a question probably to Professor SN and Mr Steiner um Professor could you expand a little bit uh on the quality and
Efficiency of different biochars particularly the biomass that they were based on uh I am particularly interested whether you had uh some sort of uh biochar based also on sanitary ways so really going back to basics of uh biochar and the follow-up question to Mr Steiner to what extent um
Certification is Following also or exploring that type of bioart to to be certified thank you um yeah if I understood your question in terms of biochar once it becomes inertinite the the type of biomass is immaterial it’s not uh it’s not relevant anymore uh basically the inertinite biochar there’s nothing
Biological about it anymore it it becomes a polymer uh it becomes very highly refractory polymer and uh it’s it’s really not important what type of uh biomass you have it does uh make a huge difference in what is being generated to get to the biochar of
Course the the amount of you know you could produce biofuel uh different sin gas of course those are very important and ultimately they yield but uh but in terms of of the biochars uh as soon as it reaches the classification uh of to me inera is is
Inet and of course there are a lot of good uh other EBC and other standards that that are mentioned with regard to toxicity those should be very important also but in terms of permanence that’s what uh I have to say yeah thanks for the question um I
Would like to answer it in two parts the first part is the the question of the of the biochar himself what we have to know is that the feed stock production procedure and everything on the way of having the the biochar in the back is influencing the quality of this product
And this has to be measured properly at the end um and that we know what is in this back or uh in this truck uh to know what kind of biochar we have and the second uh part of the answer is is on the level of certification of carbon
Dioxide removals at the end it’s a three step procedure first we have to know um what kind of biochar we produced then we have to check um as example the efficiency of the carbon inside biochar ceing the new standard from from us will contain the efficiency label as I showed
Quickly before and then the third step and that’s the most important one is where this biochar is applied The Matrix and if you apply it to the concrete then you have uh 100% Nite biochar because the biochar is still in this concrete until the house is no longer there as
Example but if you apply it to the soil that means it’s a different story and the windmill um blade propeller is again a different thing that’s why the application in The Matrix is then the third step that is really important in the certification process yep so I think we’ve reached the
End um and we have no more possibilities for questions here but we do have them later so we have a ebi booth um and the presenters will also be around so just catch them um ask your questions maybe group together because there might be some other people having the same ones
Um we’re happy to to see you at our booths and later around thanks you all thanks all for your interest and yeah let’s talk let’s talk later thanks to the presenters particularly because this was [Applause] wonderful