Is Bio-Char the Next Great Hope?
Never heard of bio-char? I was only vaguely familiar with ituntil this Tuesday. That's when McKenna Long & Aldridge's DC office played host to this year's EPA Climate Leaders award winners in a program co-sponsored by the firm and the Association of Climate Change Officers.
The event brought together some of the foremost thought leaders on climate change science andfeatured several enlightening presentations, including one by Durwood Zaelke, president of the Institute for Governance and Sustainable Development.
He described the dramatic effects on climate change of acting to control "non-CO2 climate forcers" such as black carbon (which we've written about) and bio-char.
Zaelke believes bio-char could play a significant role in reversing levels of carbon in the atmosphere.
In a nutshell, we can "cook" agricultural wastes (corn stalks, crop stubble, etc.) and generate a gas that can be used as a fuel, plus a solid material -- bio-char. If you bury the bio-char the entrained carbon remains fixed for hundreds of years. This leads to dramatic reduction of carbon emissions associated with otherwise normal biological processes breaking down agricultural biomass.
According to Dr. Zaelke if we were to encourage this practice we could return to healthy CO2 levels in the atmosphere within several decades. If you would like to receive a copy of Dr. Zaelke's presentation, please contact me.
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