Biochar

Biochar research is a Chinese enterprise. Of the 21,978 researchers whose primary pathway is biochar in the CDR Researcher Census, 9,185 - 42% - are in China. The United States has 1,276. That is a ratio of more than seven to one, the most lopsided national concentration of any carbon-removal pathway. No other pathway comes close to this. India is a distant second with 1,766 biochar researchers; the US, so dominant in direct air capture, is third here and barely visible on the chart. Biochar is the one CDR field where a single country holds a near-plurality of the entire global research workforce. ...

Biochar: the pathway Biochar is what you get when you cook biomass — crop residues, forestry waste, sewage sludge — in a low-oxygen environment at several hundred degrees Celsius. The carbon that the plant pulled out of the atmosphere ends up locked in a stable, ring-structured solid that resists microbial decay for centuries when applied to soil or used as a filler in concrete and asphalt. It is, by volume, the largest delivered carbon dioxide removal (CDR) pathway today: biochar accounts for the majority of tonnes actually issued on registries like Puro.earth and the European Biochar Certificate (EBC), even as direct air capture attracts more capital per tonne announced. ...

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Biochar delivers over 90% of all commercially traded permanent CDR credits. The $838M market is growing fast — here’s why it matters.

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