The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reported Biochar as a key technology for reaching low carbon dioxide atmospheric concentration targets. The negative emissions that can be produced by Bio-energy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) has been estimated by the Royal Society to be equivalent to a 50 to 150 ppm decrease in global atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations. Annual net emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2), methane and nitrous oxide could be reduced by a maximum of 1.8 Pg CO2-C equivalent (CO2-Ce) per year (12% of current anthropogenic CO2-Ce emissions; 1 Pg=1 Gt), and total net emissions over the course of a century by 130 Pg CO2-Ce, without endangering food security, habitat or soil conservation. Wikipedia

Articles tagged with: Carbon Action

25 February 2009

Scientists Search for Carbon Solutions in Amazonia's 'Black Earth'

Posted in News, Science, Soil

Draw-Down Strategy

Imagine if in a poverty-stricken sector of the equatorial band, littered with acidic soils barely fit for farming, there were jet-black patches of dirt, seeded with charcoal and so fertile that they could be planted continuously for over 40 years without applying fertilizer.

Then imagine that those patches were so loaded with carbon that they had six to seven times the amount of carbon per pound of the surrounding soils, that Western scientists could partially replicate the process through which the black earth was made, and that by burying carbon in earth they could augment soil fertility and, perhaps, leach carbon out of the atmosphere and reverse global warming.

Perhaps the jig is already up—too much detail. What we’re talking about is terra preta, or more colloquially, biochar, the Amazonian miracle soil.

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