Science in Society

ISIS Report 02/12/09
Science in Society #44 Letters to the Editor
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Note: comments to every article are now possible on ISIS’
website. The letters here were submitted separately, and
include only a tiny selection of the comments. Do read the
rest on www.i-sis.org.uk

Beware the one-sided biochar

Your Beware the Biochar Initiative (SiS 44) seems one-sided.
Biofuels took off as a way to remove dumped subsidised US
and EU crops from the global market, and would never have
happened without huge taxpayer subsidies. But biochar is
different. While biofuels are burned and returned to the
atmosphere, biochar is not burned. The only truly economic
biochar is produced by small farmers and doesn’t seek to
derive bio-oils or bio-gas for energy; that only pays with
huge subsidies.

The increased yields and reduced nitrate use from biochar-
enriched soils contributes to CO2 removal from the
atmosphere and reduced nitrous oxide emissions.

You have very selectively quoted the Biofuelswatch research
analysis which only focuses on the few cases where biochar
has not shown significant benefits – there is a book called
‘Biochar for Environmental Management’ that covers all the
science to date. Research is going on all over the world to
establish how biochar performs in different soils under
different climate conditions. There is no ‘one size fits
all’ with anything agricultural. For example, biochar from
coffee or cacao shading thinnings and prunings from vines,
olives, tea, apples, nuts, and other agricultural tree crops
extracts value from woody biomass that are now either burned
in the open or left to rot. Furthermore, 130 years is a long
time to get a small amount of oxidisation.

If biochar is subsidised in the way the biofuels have been,
in flagrant disregard of the carbon economics of biofuels
production, then your predictions of disaster will be
justified. But we believe that Nicholas Stern’s call for
‘equitable and universal’ carbon accounting at Copenhagen
will ensure that biochar is treated equally with other forms
of carbon sequestration and the horrendous distortions
caused by subsidising biofuels won’t happen again. Right now
if you burn biochar you get a subsidy equal to double its
energy value as electricity, if you use it as a soil
amendment you get nothing. A more supportive approach from
responsible scientists in favour of blocking subsidies for
biomass-derived fuels would do a lot more good.

Craig Sams, Chair of Soil Association, Bristol, UK

I am glad you pointed out the problems associated with the
big Biochar Initiative (Beware the Biochar Initiative, SiS
44). I am against all industrial scales - be it
agricultural, technical or science. Also, I am opposed to
every kind of colonialism and biofuels.

I am especially interested in making fertile soils out of
barren ones and keeping them fertile for a long time. I
thought about researching compost systems that include
manure and charcoal. The charcoal may then retain the
nutrients (from the manure) and give home to mycorrhiza,
apart from probably other things that it can do. By
composting organic material grown in my fields, I also
release a lot of oxidized carbon into the air. So I could as
well make charcoal out of some of it without doing too much
harm. Is that right?

Birgit Seyr, Innsbruck, Austria

Dr. Mae-Wan Ho replies

I don't disagree with much of what Craig Sam says. The
problem is the scale at which the International Biochar
Initative wants to do it, to capture huge Clean Development
subsidies while offering a false and dangerous solution. I
reviewed a lot of research done by the proponents, and very
little from Biofuelwatch, when it comes to science. I
haven't even quoted all the negative results, concentrating
on those done by the chief proponents themselves. Where I do
agree withBiofuelWatch is regarding the terrible social
consequences of land grab for bioenergy crops, whether for
biofuels or biochar; and the industrial processes are
designed to blur that distinction. Biochar as practiced by
small farmers, and indeed by the Amazonian Indians that
created terra preta, may be sustainable and beneficial,
depending on the local environmental and soil conditions. In
arid conditions, for example, biochar generated naturally
simply gets burnt up before they have a chance to decay.

You are right to criticise the system that rewards biofuels
with subsidies. That’s why those subsidies should be
removed; it is not a reason for subsidising biochar. In any
case, experience teaches us that it is only the big
producers that will capture the subsidies, not family
farmers. The carbon trading scheme simply transfers the
burden of reducing CO2 emissions from the developed to
developing countries, and is best abolished. Instead,
developed nations should offer genuine financial and
technological help to developing countries that are bearing
the brunt of climate change (see our Green Energies report,
ISIS publication).

Good, independent research on the subject is to be welcomed.
The experiment suggested by Bergit Seyr is excellent.
Neither biofuel nor biochar is harmful on a small local
sustainable scale for local communities. But we should never
allow big plantations on illusory ‘spare land’.

Read the rest of the letters to the editors from SIS44 here
http://www.i-sis.org.uk/SIS44lettersToTheEditor.php
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