We Can Have Our Carbon And Eat It Too

There’s an old expression in English, “He wants to have his cake and eat it too,” used to describe someone who wants to enjoy each of two contradictory things.  The saying might apply, for example, to someone who is a spendthrift throughout his life but also wants a handsome retirement fund at the end or, a government imposing confiscatory taxes on business but, wanting a vigorous economy as well.

In the environmental world a product exists, biochar, that may allow earth’s citizens to “Have their cake and eat it too.”

Biomass from thinning the forest for health and fire reduction could be used to create biochar, synfuels, and other products.

Biochar is hardly anything new.  Most famously the use of the material to enhance poor soils is attributed to the indigenous natives of the Amazon basin who are said to be responsible for some of the deep, rich soils found in some areas of the basin.

Biochar is produced by heating biomass in a very low, or even a, no oxygen, environment, an environment in which combustion does not occur.  The process is called pyrolysis.  In the pre-industrial world biochar was created both deliberately and accidentally (shovel a pile of dirt over a still burning camp fire and some biochar will result. 

When the conditions necessary to create biochar are present oils and syngas are produced.  The material left after the volatiles have been driven off is called “char.”

In an uncontrolled setting the oils and gasses are emitted to the atmosphere or absorbed into soil as what we today call pollution but, in an industrial setting the oils and gasses can be captured and used to create a host of high value products.

But the real “magic” in the process comes because the char can be worked into agricultural soils as an amendment capable of significantly improving productivity and, research seems to show, working over time to actually capture greenhouse gasses from the atmosphere.

In short, the research seems to show that creating biochar is actually a carbon negative process.  Oils and syngasses are captured and utilized in place of fossil fuels like petroleum while the char, worked into the soil, eventually captures more carbon than was contained in the biomass in the first place.

The implications are obvious.  In the forests of North America, for example, several hundred million acres of trees grow in overcrowded forests prone to massive fires.  In Washington State this year climate change gas emissions, toxic chemical and elemental emissions and particulate emissions to the atmosphere may have resulted in pollution exceeding all the industrial and auto related pollution created in the entire state for a year or more.

But what if the forests were to be thinned, as most professionals believe necessary, with the biomass used to create synthetic oil to fuel our vehicles, natural gas substitutes to heat our homes, and biochar to absorb the carbon emissions that must occur in the course of man’s living on the planet?  What if, in nations where most of the wood grown ends up fueling home fires, the fuel could be diverted to produce biochar with the resulting oils and gasses heating homes and the char going into the soil to enhance food production?

The pop-environmental community appears to prefer this.

Stunningly, there is little impetus among the pop-environmental community to press forward with investigations into the many benefits bio-char appears to offer.  One would think, if people who think of themselves as environmentalists were really interested in environmental enhancements, there would be massive pressure on the governments of the world to step up research and, if the conclusions are as favorable as initial investigations appear to indicate, to begin large scale production.

But then, there’s not much money for activist groups in actually solving problems.  In fact, resolving a large scale environmental problem is, in terms of the climate change discussion, revenue negative, for the pop-enviros so, don’t expect to see much excitement about a potentially paradigm changing solution to carbon emissions in the environmental community.  

We can only hope that someday we will actually get serious about environmental enhancement.