How much CO2 can biochar potentially remove from the atmosphere?
The IBI promotes the use of waste biomass for the production of biochar. Large amounts of agricultural residues, municipal green waste and forestry biomass are currently burned or left to decompose and release CO2 and methane back into the atmosphere. IBI has produced a preliminary analysis of several different carbon offset scenarios titled, “How Much Carbon Can Biochar Systems Offset–and When?” based on using only biomass from waste streams. Even a conservative scenario, using only 27% of the world’s crop and forestry wastes for biochar, could sequester 0.25 gigatons (Gt) of carbon a year by 2030 with biochar alone. If the energy co-product of biochar production is used to offset fossil fuel use, then the carbon offset potential of biochar more than doubles to 0.6 Gt of carbon a year by 2030. A more optimistic scenario shows that by the year 2050, approximately 2.2 Gt of carbon could be stored or offset on an annual basis. The assumptions used that produced the high end figure are a
