Beyond biochar basics: Scaling up and moving the needle

Realizing the full-scale potential of biochar production and application capacity presents an opportunity to sequester 3.3 Gt CO2eq yr-1, or approximately a third of the CO2 that must be removed from the atmosphere to stave off further climate change. Synergies between biochar services and land management, such as forest fuel reduction, improvements to soil health, and the remediation of soil contaminants, makes biochar one of the most logistically and economically viable land management pathway to offset carbon emissions. Yet, wide ranging barriers remain for building up biochar production capacity, applications and consistent markets. This is due to slowly emerging practices, lack of policies and priorities to promote biochar, and an ongoing need for additional research pertaining to best practices and projections of biochar effects on soil and ecosystem properties. Here we present recent insights from two workshops that occurred in the fall of 2022 which were targeted at reducing barriers for biochar production and application across the U.S. National Forest lands. These workshops provide the context to describe information about emerging biochar production technologies aimed towards reducing the logistics, wildfire risk and air quality impacts of producing biochar from forest slash. Numerous immediate opportunities for biochar applications exist in forest systems, such as the rehabilitation of lands disturbed by wildfire, insect and disease infestations, natural disasters, mining reclamation, and carbon sequestration. Critical to these efforts, and for scaling up to the full potential of biochar technologies, is the immediate need to understand new technologies and biochar quality, the necessity for fire support crews near biochar production sites, logistics of making biochar during harvest operations rather than piling, and additional efforts towards broadscale research and data synthesis.