Cooling the planet with biomass

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Cooling the Planet with Biomass?
350ppm CO2 ?
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Catastrophic climate change demands strong
measures

• Burning biomass and sequestering the carbon will
  reduce the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
• 500 million hectares of biomass plantations may
  be enough to re-freeze the Arctic and keep the
  methane locked up.

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Terra preta Charcoal has helped to lock carbon
into the soil for millennia
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Modern Biochar

• What Amazonian peoples achieved in centuries or
  millennia, modern agriculture and the forestry
  industry can do in a few years, locking decades
  worth of fossil fuel emissions into the soil
  forever.

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Biochar can take 6 billion tonnes of carbon out
of the atmosphere every year (Tim Flannery)
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Bioenergy with CCS can cool the planet even more
(J.Hansen)
www.epa.state.oh.us/dir/ccsdiagram.jpg
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What do we (not) know about biochar?

• There is no long-term study to show whether soil
  nutrients and carbon will stay in the soil. The
  longest study was abandoned after 4 years and no
  results were published.
• Nobody knows how to incorporate biochar into the
  soil without increasing soil erosion and
  depletion, which would emit even more CO2.
• In boreal forests, biochar has been shown to
  increase microbial activity, leading to original
  soil carbon being released into the atmosphere.

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The biochar investment rush begins
Biochar is a by-product of pyrolysis. This
means gasification of biomass, which
yields bio-oil and syngas. Both can be used for
heat and power, or converted to synthetic
bio-diesel.
Dynamotive pyrolysis plant
Char is a by-product of pyrolysis. Revenues from
selling it as a fertiliser, and possibly gaining
future carbon credits would make pyrolysis firms
more competitive.
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Integrated biorefineries
Biochar would be another lucrative product from
future integrated biorefineries. Those would
bring together the pulp and paper industry,
agro-business and the chemical industry to
produce transport fuels, heat and power, various
chemical products and fertilisers.
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500 million hectares of biochar plantations?
Pictures by FSC Watch and Global Justice Ecology
Project
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Industrial monocultures accelerate climate change
Monocultures are the main driver of
deforestation. Monocultures of trees or crops
deplete soil and water. They require large
amounts of agro-chemicals made from fossil
fuels. Nitrous oxide and methane from industrial
agriculture accounts for 14 of all greenhouse
gas emissions. Deforestation accounts for 18
- and peat drainage possibly for even more.
are not
www.timberwatch.org.za/
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Climate change from ecosystem destruction More
than carbon emissions
Nitrogen Cycle Regulated by soil microbes and
plants (controls levels of the greenhouse
gas nitrous oxide) www.fossweb.com
Evapo-transpiration Forests play a key role in
regulating rainfall systems and storm- tracks
jrscience.wcp.muohio.edu
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Monocultures drive Amazon destruction
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Storm clouds over the Amazon How the forest
drives rainfall
The Amazon forest recycles 70-80 of its
rainfall. Large amounts of energy are released
and push rain clouds across much of Latin America
and the southern US. Without enough dense
canopy, that whole rainfall system could collapse.
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NASA satellite Amazon Fires 72,000 Sept
2007 Para Up 39-85 Mato Grosso Up 100-127
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Soya refugees today biochar refugees tomorrow?
Indigenous environmental refugees (climate
change, soy expansion) Mbya Guarani people on
the streets of Asunción, Paraguay,
www.globalforestcoalition.org
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Eviction for sugar ethanol in Brazil We are
well positioned to win the current land grab in
next-generation fuels (BestEnergies, leading
investor in pyrolysis and biochar research)
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No stable climate without biodiversity

• Biodiversity losses reduce the Earths ability to
  regulate the climate. If species are lost, the
  ability of ecosystems to function can suddenly
  collapse.
• We are around today because, during previous
  warming periods and mass extinctions, enough
  species survived to eventually stabilise the
  climate.

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Conclusions 1

• Fossil fuel burning and ecosystem destruction are
  the twin drivers of climate change.
• The industrial exploitation of the biosphere is
  not compatible with the surival of human and
  other species.

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Conclusions 2

• We may not be able to prevent catastrophic
  climate change. There are no known ways of
  cooling the planet.
• Planetary engineering of the biosphere is likely
  to trigger irreversible ecological and climate
  collapse.
• We need to stop the destruction of the biosphere
  and the burning of fossil fuels to give humans
  and other species a chance of survival.