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It may or may not be a perfect climate solution, but it is an extremely simple one.
Low-tech carbon removal is all the rage these days. Whether it’s spreading crushed rocks on fields or injecting sludgy biomass underground, relatively simplistic solutions have seen a boom in funding. But there’s one cheap, nature-based method that hasn’t been able to drum up as much attention from big name climate investors: biochar.
This flaky, charcoal-like substance has been produced and used as a fertilizer for millennia, and its potential to lock up the carbon contained in organic matter is well-documented. It’s made by heating up biomass such as wood or plants in a low-oxygen environment via a process called pyrolysis, thereby sequestering up to 40% to 50% of the carbon contained within that organic matter for hundreds or (debatably — but we’ll get to that) even thousands of years. Ideally, the process utilizes waste biomass such as plant material and forest residue left over from harvesting crops or timber, which otherwise might just be burned.
The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says biochar could store about 2.6 billion metric tons of CO2 per year. And by some metrics, this ancient method of carbon removal is already leagues ahead of the rest. Last year, biochar accounted for 94% of all carbon dioxide removal credits that were actually fulfilled, according to CDR.fyi, which tracks the CO2 removal market. That means that while corporate buyers are purchasing carbon credits that use an array of different removal methods, biochar has thus far dominated the market when it comes to actually making good on these purchases.
Some of the largest corporate buyers of CO2 removal credits have biochar in their portfolios. Microsoft, by far the most prominent player in this space, has bought over 200,000 tons of biochar credits — part of its quest to become carbon negative by 2050 — although that’s still a mere fraction of the over 6.6 million tons of CO2 removal the company has bought overall. JPMorgan Chase, which aims to match every ton of its operational emissions with carbon dioxide removal credits by 2030, has bought nearly 19,000 tons of biochar credits, representing about 26% of its CO2 removal portfolio.
But despite its technical maturity, biochar has yet to generate the same level of excitement or venture capital investment as more complex methods of carbon removal such as direct air capture, which garnered $142 million in investment last year. By comparison, biochar companies raised a cumulative total of $74 million in 2023. While that’s no small change, it doesn’t compare to the amount of capital VCs and other climate tech funders have poured even into other similarly elemental carbon removal technologies.
For example, Frontier, a collaborative fund for tech companies to catalyze emerging solutions in this space, recently announced a $58 million deal with Vaulted Deep, a startup that injects wet biomass from food waste to poop deep underground. And at the end of last year, Frontier inked a $57 million deal with Lithos Carbon, a company pursuing enhanced rock weathering. This involves spreading crushed up rocks onto fields, which react with the CO2 in the air to form bicarbonate; that’s eventually carried out to sea, where the carbon remains permanently sequestered on the ocean floor. In other words, it’s just an acceleration of the natural weathering process, which normally takes hundreds of thousands of years. VCs backing Lithos include mainstream names like Union Square Ventures, Greylock Ventures, and Bain Capital Ventures, while big-time climate tech VC Lowercarbon Capital led Vaulted Deep’s seed round.
The questions around biochar’s durability — that is, how long it can actually lock away carbon — are potentially unanswerable, and that’s at least partially driving investor reticence.
“Biochar falls in this very interesting middle ground - you create it, and then it is constantly degrading,” Freya Chay, program lead at CarbonPlan, a nonprofit that analyzes different carbon removal pathways, told me. She said that we just don’t have the scientific know-how “to predict, really clearly, how much is going to still be in your soil at 100 years or at 1,000 years.”
Frontier, for its part, only considers carbon removal “permanent” if it can sequester carbon for at least 1,000 years. Some studies indicate that a large proportion of biochar can achieve this, but it’s hard to definitively prove, and we’re far from a scientific consensus. Thus far the fund has steered clear of investing in biochar, noting that detailed protocols must be developed to measure its durability under a variety of soil and weather conditions.
Measurement, reporting and verification is often the downfall for nature-based solutions (see: the hoopla around bogus forest carbon credits). And while it is simple to measure how much of the carbon in biomass ends up sequestered in biochar, “it's where you draw the project boundaries in terms of where the MRV falls apart,” Annie Nichols, director of operations and project management at Pacific Biochar told me. For example, one might want to ensure that trees aren’t being cut down or crops aren’t being grown just for the purpose of creating biochar, and this often falls outside the scope of traditional measurement protocols. Pacific Biochar, for its part, sources its waste biomass from forests in high fire risk areas of California, where the excessive accumulation of woody debris poses a danger.
Pacific Biochar ranks as the world’s third largest supplier of carbon removal, with over 28,000 tons of credits delivered. Biochar “got a lot of attention before there was actually much utility,” its CEO, Josiah Hunt told me, referring to the period in the late 2000s when Al Gore was heavily hyping its benefits. In his 2009 book “Our Choice,” Gore called biochar “one of the most exciting new strategies for restoring carbon to depleted soils, and sequestering significant amounts of CO2 for 1,000 years and more.” But at that time, Hunt said, “There weren't really carbon markets ready to work with it yet.”
Prior to 2020, Pacific Biochar’s revenue relied solely on biochar fertilizer sales to farmers. It was only when the carbon credits market picked up that the company was able to scale. Today, Pacific Biochar sells most of its credits directly, as opposed to on an independent exchange, though it works with the carbon credits platform Carbonfuture to deliver credits to customers and perform the necessary verification to ensure the company’s carbon removal data is accurate.
Pacific Biochar’s credits sell for $180 per metric ton, cheaper than nearly all other removal methods and far below the weighted average of $488 for CO2 removal. That’s because producing biochar via pyrolysis requires much less energy than something like direct air capture. It’s also a more mature process than most emergent nature-based solutions such as enhanced rock weathering, meaning that comparably less money needs to be spent demonstrating that the process works as intended.
A number of biochar companies told me they think biochar has been overlooked in favor of more novel technological solutions. “There's this fixation on trying to find the high tech solution, the SaaS app that's going to solve climate change,” Thor Kallestad, CEO and cofounder of Myno Carbon, told me. By comparison, biochar can seem like a relic of an earlier era that never quite reached its potential.
Myno, founded by oil and gas veterans, is self-funding the buildout of a large-scale biochar and electricity co-generation facility in Port Angeles, Washington, which will source its fuel from the copious timber waste in Washington State. It’s still in the initial design phase, but the ultimate goal is to produce about 70,000 tons of biochar per year alongside 20 megawatts of power. That amounts to about 100,000 carbon dioxide removal credits, which Kallestad hopes to sell for less than $100 per metric ton. Ideally, he said, the plant will serve as a proof of concept that will help drive future investments.
While there haven’t yet been any major scandals in the biochar-sourcing world, the BBC ran an exposé in 2022 on a biomass-fueled power station in the UK that was logging old-growth forests to create wood pellets that were then burned for power. The company, Drax, had previously claimed that it was only sourcing sawdust and waste wood. While Drax maintains that its biomass is “sustainable and legally harvested,” further reporting indicates that as of last year, the company was still sourcing from old-growth forests. The worry is that something similar could happen with biochar production as demand ramps up.
Chay says the cost-benefit analysis for making biochar gets even thornier when taking into account the “counterfactual of how we otherwise could have used biomass.” After all, biomass can also be burned for energy, and if the emissions are captured and stored, that’s a carbon removal strategy too. And with many looking towards biomass-based fuels as a way to decarbonize industries such as aviation and shipping, demand for waste biomass appears set to increase alongside uncertainty regarding its best use case. “Zooming forward to 2050, I'm not sure there is anything such as waste biomass,” Chay told me.
But in the short-term at least, there’s enough to go around. A recent Department of Energy report noted that “available but unused” biomass such as logging and agricultural residue could contribute around 350 tons to the nation’s supply every year. That’s about as much biomass as the United States uses for bioenergy today
“Certainly biochar has a place,” Chay said. She’s not convinced that it will ever make sense to conceptualize biochar production as “permanent carbon removal” though. “Maybe we just let it be this kind of interstitial durability. We figure out how to value that while also optimizing for agricultural co-benefits.”
Investors may remain wary of a solution that occupies this hard-to-define space between short and long-term CO2 removal, but Hunt’s not too worried. “I don’t think that’s horribly detrimental,” he told me. He sees biochar’s strong performance in the carbon credits marketplace as enough to sustain the industry for now. “I do think the buying community is what drives our growth. And even if we’re not the unicorns, even if we’re just the work mules, that’s fine with me. I don’t mind being the mule of climate change action.”
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How the Migratory Bird Treaty Act could become the administration’s ultimate weapon against wind farms.
The Trump administration has quietly opened the door to strictly enforcing a migratory bird protection law in a way that could cast a legal cloud over wind farms across the country.
As I’ve chronicled for Heatmap, the Interior Department over the past month expanded its ongoing investigation of the wind industry’s wildlife impacts to go after turbines for killing imperiled bald and golden eagles, sending voluminous records requests to developers. We’ve discussed here how avian conservation activists and even some former government wildlife staff are reporting spikes in golden eagle mortality in areas with operating wind projects. Whether these eagle deaths were allowable under the law – the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act – is going to wind up being a question for regulators and courts if Interior progresses further against specific facilities. Irrespective of what one thinks about the merits of wind energy, it’s extremely likely that a federal government already hostile to wind power will use the law to apply even more pressure on developers.
What’s received less attention than the eagles is that Trump’s team signaled it could go even further by using the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, a separate statute intended to support bird species flying south through the U.S. from Canada during typical seasonal migration periods. At the bottom of an Interior press release published in late July, the department admitted it was beginning a “careful review of avian mortality rates associated with the development of wind energy projects located in migratory flight paths,” and would determine whether migratory birds dying because of wind farms qualified as “‘incidental’ takings” – harm or death – under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act.
While not stated explicitly, what this means is that the department appears to be considering whether to redefine these deaths as intentional under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, according to Ben Cowan, a lawyer with the law firm Troutman Pepper Locke.
I reached out to Cowan after the eagle investigation began because his law firm posted a bulletin warning that developers “holding active eagle permits” might want to prepare for “subpoenas that may be forthcoming.” During our chat earlier this month, he told me that the eagle probe is likely going to strain financing for projects even on private lands that wouldn’t require any other forms of federal sign-off: “Folks don’t want to operate if they feel there’s a significant risk they might take an eagle without authorization.”
Cowan then voiced increasing concern about the migratory bird effort, however, because the law on this matter could be a quite powerful – if legally questionable – weapon against wind development.
Unlike the Endangered Species Act or the eagle protection law, there is currently no program on the books for a wind project developer to even obtain a permit for incidental impacts to a migratory bird. Part of the reason for the absence of such a program is the usual federal bureaucratic struggle that comes with implementing a complex statute, with the added effect of the ping-pong of federal control; the Biden administration started a process for permitting “incidental” impacts, but it was scrapped in April by the Trump team. Most protection of migratory birds under the law today comes from voluntary measures conducted by private companies and nonprofits in consultation with the federal government.
Hypothetically, hurting a migratory bird should be legally permissible to the federal government. That’s because the administration loosened implementation of the law earlier this year with an Interior Department legal opinion that stated the agency would only go after harm that was “intentional” – a term of art under the statute.
This is precisely why Cowan is fretting about migratory birds, however. Asked why the wind industry hasn’t publicly voiced more anxiety about this potential move, he said industry insiders genuinely hope this is “bluster” because such a selective use of this law “would be so beyond the pale.”
“It’s basically saying the purpose of a wind farm is to kill migratory birds, which is very clearly not the case – it’s to generate renewable electricity,” Cowan told me, adding that any effort by the Interior Department would inevitably result in lawsuits. “I mean, look at what this interpretation would mean: To classify it as intentional take would say the purpose of operating a wind farm would be to kill a bird. It’s obviously not. But this seems to be a way this administration is contemplating using the MBTA to block the operation of wind farms.”
It’s worth acknowledging just how bonkers this notion is on first blush. Is the federal government actually going to decide that any operating wind farm could be illegal? That would put entire states’ power supplies – including GOP-heavy states like Iowa – in total jeopardy. Not to mention it would be harmful overall to take operating capacity offline in any fashion at a moment when energy demand is spiking because of data centers and artificial intelligence. Even I, someone who has broken quite a few eye-popping stories about Trump’s war on renewables, struggle to process the idea of the government truly going there on the MBTA.
And yet, a door to this activity is now open, like a cleaver hanging over the industry’s head.
I asked the Interior Department to clarify its timeline for the MBTA review. It declined to comment on the matter. I would note that in mid-August, the Trump administration began maintenance on a federal dashboard for tracking regulations such as these and hasn’t updated it since. So we’ll have to wait for nothing less than their word to know what direction this is going in.
And more on the week’s most important conflicts around renewable energy projects.
1. Santa Fe County, New Mexico – County commissioners approved the controversial AES Rancho Viejo solar project after months of local debate, which was rendered more intense by battery fire concerns.
2. Nantucket, Massachusetts – The latest episode of the Vineyard Wind debacle has dropped, and it appears the offshore wind project’s team is now playing ball with the vacation town.
3. Klickitat County, Washington – Washington Gov. Bob Ferguson is pausing permitting on Cypress Creek Renewables’ Carriger solar project despite a recommendation from his own permitting council, citing concerns from tribes that have dogged other renewables projects in the state.
4. Tippecanoe County, Indiana – The county rejected what is believed to have been its first utility-scale solar project, flying in the face of its zoning staff.
5. Morrow County, Oregon – This county is opting into a new state program that purports to allow counties more input in how they review utility-scale solar projects.
6. Ocean County, New Jersey – The Jersey shoreline might not get a wind farm any time soon, but now that angst is spreading to battery storage.
7. Fairfield County, Ohio – Hey, at least another solar farm is getting permitted in Ohio.
Talking NEPA implementation and permitting reform with Pamela Goodwin, an environmental lawyer at Saul Ewing LLP.
This week’s conversation is with Pamela Goodwin, an environmental lawyer with Saul Ewing LLP. I reached out to her to chat about permitting because, well, when is that not on all of our minds these days. I was curious, though, whether Trump’s reforms to National Environmental Policy Act regulations and recent court rulings on the law’s implementation would help renewables in any way, given how much attention has been paid to “permitting reform” over the years. To my surprise, there are some silver linings here – though you’ll have to squint to see them.
The following chat was lightly edited for clarity.
So walk me through how you see the Trump administration handling renewable energy projects right now under NEPA.
In general, the federal government has been much more reluctant to the timely issue of permits in contrast to what we might be seeing on the more traditional side of things.
But that’s separate from NEPA — it relates to public notice and comments and the opportunity for third parties to get involved, ensuring any decision-making on the government side is done in a way that’s evocative of a fair system. On the NEPA side, I don’t know if they’re going to treat renewables any differently than they’re going to treat other sorts of projects. That’s different, from a policy perspective, [from] how they’re handling the permits.
If, from a policy perspective, the federal government is less inclined to make a determination about a particular project — or if it decides that it doesn’t like wind, for example, and isn’t going to issue a permit — that’s different than the procedural elements associated with a NEPA review.
The Supreme Court recently ruled in the Seven County case that agencies can be granted a lot of deference in their reviews under NEPA, seeing it more as a procedural statute than a substantive roadblock. What will this lead to?
I think that what we’re seeing – and every agency’s different – but what the court said is that lower courts should defer to the agency to establish their own protocols under NEPA. They’ve begun to streamline the process by which they issue permits, issue notices of those permits, and give people the opportunity to comment on them.
What we’re anticipating will happen if the court gets its wishes – and candidly, I think this is a good thing for developers, on both the renewables and non-renewables side – is that we’ll see more expeditious permitting from the federal government.
You may not like the determinations. There’s a possibility that certain permits are denied if the nature of the permit is in conflict with the federal government’s policy and intention. But you’ll get a quicker decision than you used to get. And if there’s a will to issue a permit, you’ll get it faster.
We’ve heard the concept of permitting reform or NEPA reform as a leveling of the playing field, but in this environment, it is not entirely clear that’ll be the case. Where does the battleground turn then for those who get, as you put it, rejections faster?
That’s a great question. Regrettably, the immediate battleground is the courts. There is certainly a right and an opportunity for anybody who feels a determination was incorrect to challenge that, and to challenge the particular agency’s implementation of NEPA.
Okay, but what’s the remedy here if renewables companies are just getting rejections faster from the Trump team?
Without a real-world example, it’s hard to give you legal theories, but they will always exist. It’ll be circumstantial, and good lawyers always come up with good arguments. I don’t think this issue is fully resolved, either. The Supreme Court has done a favor to everybody by at least defining the issue, but now we’ll have to see what happens as agencies make these kinds of determinations.