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Taiwan’s biochar target will be counted under rules written elsewhere, and those rules rest on stability methods that researchers are still assembling.
A national target that borrows its measuring stick
Peng Chi-ming, Taiwan’s environment minister, told a European podcast that his ministry is aiming for 1 million tonnes of biochar carbon removal per year by 2030, and that it will build its certification and trading system by referencing four outside frameworks: the EU’s CRCF (the Carbon Removals and Carbon Farming regulation), the European Biochar Certificate (EBC), Japan’s agricultural biochar strategy and the EU CRCF Buyers’ Club (Taiwan’s environment minister Peng Chi-ming sets a goal of 1 million tonnes of biochar carbon removal per year by 2030). Three of the four are European. None is Taiwanese. That is a reasonable shortcut for a ministry that wants an internationally compatible system, and it has one consequence Peng did not spell out: whatever those frameworks assume about how long biochar carbon stays in the ground, Taiwan’s target inherits.
The same question is now in front of Brussels. The European Commission has proposed directing EU ETS (Emissions Trading System, the bloc’s carbon market) funds to permanent CO2 removals for the first time, and German Biochar e.V. is arguing that biochar should qualify, invoking “technology neutrality” (German Biochar e.V. argues biochar belongs in the EU ETS removals mechanism). The argument is tidy, but it hangs on one word. Biochar gets in if it counts as permanent, and permanence is not something the material declares about itself. Someone has to measure it.
Buyers have not waited for that measurement to settle. Galvanize led a $70 million project financing for AMP tied to a 200,000-tonne Google removal agreement using biochar (AMP’s $70M project financing tied to a 200,000-tonne Google removal agreement using biochar). Climeworks has also brought biochar into its offering, which I covered in Climeworks Integrates Biochar to Diversify CDR Portfolios. Every delivered tonne in those deals carries a durability factor, and that factor comes from a method, not from the kiln.
The people building the method
Haichao Li, Harald Cederlund, Elias S. Azzi and co-authors have a paper in Radiocarbon on using bomb-radiocarbon signatures to trace biochar mineralization in soil (Bomb 14C for tracing biochar mineralization in soil). Bomb 14C is the radiocarbon spike that mid-century nuclear testing left in the atmosphere; biochar carrying that signature can be told apart from native soil carbon as it breaks down. This is a method paper. It describes a way to trace loss, it reports no durability factor, and it is a different evidentiary route from the decay-model assumptions that crediting has typically leaned on.
Separately, a piece in Nature Reviews Earth & Environment takes up Rock-Eval pyrolysis, a laboratory heating method, as a way to measure biochar carbon stability (Using Rock-Eval pyrolysis to measure biochar carbon stability). I cannot say more about its findings than its title states.
What I also cannot tell from these sources is whether a radiocarbon tracer and a Rock-Eval reading would return the same stability number for the same biochar. Nothing I have shows these researchers disagreeing with each other, either. The narrower, defensible statement is this: the toolkit behind “permanent” biochar is still under construction, by named scientists, at the same time that ministers and trade associations are writing the word into targets and funding rules.
Firm numbers on top, methods in progress underneath
Peng’s million tonnes a year is already a removal figure, not a production figure, so it presupposes a conversion from biochar carbon to durable removal that CRCF and EBC supply. German Biochar e.V. wants ETS money on the strength of the same conversion. Google’s 200,000 tonnes rest on it too. The commitments are fixed. The measurement is not.
Lisa Song (@lisalsong.bsky.social on Bluesky) put the general version of this bluntly, writing about forestry rules rather than biochar: “Logging companies (w/help from IKEA!) say literally cutting down trees should count as carbon negative and be credited as good for the planet. And they might get away with it.” Her point is about accounting, and it transfers. Whoever shapes the rule for what counts as removal shapes the number of removals. The forestry fight is one reason I argued in Why Carbon Removal Needs More Than Trees that durability has to be measured, not assumed. In biochar the rule-shapers are the CRCF and EBC standard-setters and, one step behind them, the scientists whose methods those standards will or will not cite.
Why this matters now
If Taiwan, the EU ETS and corporate buyers all anchor on CRCF and EBC, then the stability methodology those two frameworks adopt becomes the conversion factor for a national target, a public funding stream and procurement budgets at once. Biochar developers, registries and buyers should read the measurement literature as closely as the policy announcements. An EBC methodology update could change how many durable tonnes Taiwan’s million represents without anyone in Taipei changing a word.
What to watch
Two documents, not the podcast, will tell you what a Taiwanese biochar tonne is worth. First, whether the next CRCF or EBC methodology updates cite or adopt radiocarbon- or Rock-Eval-based stability evidence, or stay with decay-model assumptions. Second, how Peng’s ministry specifies permanence when it publishes the details of its certification system. Until then, the target is a promise and the tonne count is a method still being written.
Citations
- Com — Taiwan’s environment minister Peng Chi-ming sets a goal of 1 million tonnes of biochar carbon removal per year by 2030
- LinkedIn — German Biochar e.V. argues biochar belongs in the EU ETS removals mechanism — LinkedIn post
- Waste360 — AMP’s $70M project financing tied to a 200,000-tonne Google removal agreement using biochar
- DOI-resolved paper — Bomb 14C for tracing biochar mineralization in soil
- Nature — Using Rock-Eval pyrolysis to measure biochar carbon stability — research paper
- Bluesky — @lisalsong.bsky.social on Bluesky — Bluesky post