New report on biochar shows promise

A new report by the US Department of Agriculture is saying biochar can be added to glacial soils to help reduce carbon dioxide emissions. Biochar is created by part burning the biomass created from wood, plants and manure and adding the resulting material to soils. It is already known to greatly increase crop yields of many plants, but now these scientists are assessing its effect on glacial soils.

The researchers found that adding the biochar to the glacial soils at between 2 and 60 percent greatly reduce the emission of greenhouse gasses, with a reduction in nitrous oxides for soils at 20-60 percent. They also found the production of ethylene in the soils added with biochar, an important stimulator for growth.

This further demonstrates the value of biochar in the limiting of carbon emissions. Bruno Glaser of the Instituteof Agriculturaland Nutritional Sciences, Martin-Luther University Halle-Wittenberg said in this year’s Climate Action, “about 10 per cent of the EU’s carbon emissions could be offset by more productive use of biomass and crop residues through pyrolysis”

Furthermore, biochar is a short term option to reduce emissions in a world where most climate change mitigation strategies require complex long term planning. Glaser states that, “the EU intends to reduce these emissions (basis 2005) by 14 per cent by 2020. However, with the large-scale deployment of biochar, this could be improved to 23 per cent. If implemented on a global scale, biochar could have a much larger impact and go a very long way to slowing or possibly reversing the increase of atmospheric CO2”.