One solution to “carbon pollution” is biochar, but according to the Australian government’s policy on emissions trading, the science of biochar is not fully developed – so it can’t be included in any emissions trading scheme.
According to Environmental Scientist, Professor Syd Shea:
Biochar is a fine-grained, highly porous charcoal that helps soils retain nutrients and water. The carbon in biochar resists degradation and sequesters carbon in soils for hundreds to thousands of years, providing a potentially powerful tool for mitigating anthropogenic climate change. When the biochar is made from agricultural and plantation wastes that would otherwise decompose within a few years, emissions of greenhouse gasses to the atmosphere are avoided and that carbon is permanently stored in the biochar.
The Rainbow Bee Eater team, named after a beautiful bird that lives in the regions where they work, has been working on biochar for several years. They are planning to implement a pilot scale operational biochar trial on a 23 thousand hectare wheat belt farm in Western Australia in 2009.
Project Rainbow Bee Eater, a consortium of farmers, scientists and engineers claims the Australian Government’s White Paper, which provides the policy framework for the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme, has not recognized the potential for rapid, very large scale and permanent bio-sequestration of inorganic carbon because the policy document excludes biochar.
Professor Syd Shea, a member of the Rainbow Bee Eater team, said ““the science behind the use of biochar to increase soil productivity and to create a long term, safe carbon sink is well established.”
“Inorganic carbon, which is the major component of biochars made using modern charcoal making technologies, would remain in soils for hundreds to thousands of years.”
“The carbon accounting for biochar is simple and does not require complex soil sampling. The biochar is weighed before we add it to the soil and the content of the inorganic carbon is measured using a simple analysis the coal industry does every day called ‘proximate analysis’. Each tonne of inorganic carbon in the biochar locks up 3.67 tonnes of carbon dioxide”.
Professor Shea said, “The incorporation of charcoal (biochar) to increase soil productivity was carried out in the Amazon 2000 years ago. Research by many scientists around the world over the past two decades in a variety of climates and soils, with biochars made from a variety of feed stocks, has shown that biochar increases productivity in a large number of plant and tree crops.”
“Trials on the use of bio char to increase wheat productivity in the Western Australian wheat belt carried out in cooperation with the Western Australian Department of Agriculture and Food (DAFWA) have shown wheat crop yields in pot and field trials increasing by between 10 and 20 percent. Larger field trials in 2008, undertaken under the supervision of Dr. Stephen Davies from DAFWA, which have just been harvested, also demonstrated that bio char made from mallee eucalypts incorporated into wheat belt soils at high rates significantly increases wheat biomass compared to cultivated soil with no biochar.”
The Rainbow Bee Eater team agreed that further operational trials were essential to further develop the technology required for large-scale conversion of crop and plantation wastes into biochar and to confirm the economic viability of the process – but the science is not in doubt.
Ian Stanley, a Western Australian wheat farmer whose wheat crop this year will exceed 30,000 tonnes, said “I am confident it will be possible to integrate biochar production and incorporation into the existing farming systems, in part, because we will use existing harvesting and seeding systems with minor modifications”.
Peter Burgess, the leader of the Rainbow Bee Eater team, said “we have undertaken extensive reviews globally of a variety of technologies and processes that have the capacity to reduce large quantities of GHG emissions. Our modelling indicates that broad scale incorporation into soils of biochar produced from crop and plantation residues is very cost effective and is possible at a very large scale. Project Rainbow Bee Eater is designed to be integrated into existing farming systems, is regionally based, complements food production and, unlike many other large schemes that are proposed, could be implemented rapidly.”
Mr. Burgess said “we understand the complexities of the international carbon accounting system our Government faces but we believe the Rainbow Bee Eater system is no different in concept or outcome from Carbon Capture & Storage that was accepted by the White Paper. Biochar will store the carbon in the top few centimeters of soil, safely, at much lower cost and with other benefits to Australia.”
“If Rainbow Bee Eater receives credits for the carbon locked up in the biochar, we believe we will reduce Australia’s annual CO2e emissions by at least 20 million tonnes within a decade using existing waste biomass streams and purpose grown tree crops. That is nearly 4% of Australia’s current emissions. The longer term potential is much greater. Other by-products of this regionally based project include regional jobs, renewable energy and amelioration of soil and biodiversity degradation.
“Biochar made from crop and plantation waste could store carbon permanently in cleared areas of Australia like the WA wheat belt. It thus has the potential to achieve a large part of the Carbon Pollution Reduction our Government is targeting for 2020.
“Carbon credits for biochar are needed to unlock this potential.”
Professor Syd Shea is an Environmental Scientist at the Notre Dame University in Freemantle, Western Australia.
I received the photograph of the Rainbow Bee Eater from Professor Syd Shea with the note:
This beautiful bird survives in some of the harshest environments in Australia. Its habitat overlaps most of the area that could provide large carbon capture and storage opportunities in Australia. The photograph of this bird exploding from its nest is also a metaphor of the rapidity with which carbon capture and storage using biochar could make a major contribution to reducing carbon emissions while at the same time causing the reversal of environmental, social and economic decline of regional Australia.