On the path to a Carbon Negative Future –

Marissa, a newly minted 2canologist at Shelburne Farms, has just lit about 4 pounds of softwood pellets in the TLUD [Top Lit Up Draft] stove she has just built. In about 75 minutes, this will turn into about 1 pound of biochar suitable for experimenting with.
For [...]

John Gray’s current essay in The New Statesman is a strong argument for inventing Modern Era 2.0.
“… The reality, which is that western power is in retreat nearly everywhere, is insistently denied. Yet the rise of China means more than the emergence of a new great power. Its deeper import is that the ideologies [...]

On November 14th, I was able to run a batch of year old grass tablets
made in a BHS Energy Slugger through a TLUD stove designed by Paul S.
Anderson [Dr. TLUD] and assembled in India.

This shows that we can extend the range of options for the carbon in
grass biomass to include carbon negative solutions such as [...]

Trees and grasses are approximately 50% carbon.
The critical question at hand is simply this: Can the carbon captured by photosynthesis and converted by pyrolysis to stable agricultural charcoal, Biochar, properly inoculated with minerals, microbes, fungi, etc, be used today to:
1. improve soil quality &  crop yields?  Are our soils at an optimum carbon content level [...]

Dear Friends,
After much expansion and refinement, the final copy (Version 2) of the “All Biochars…” paper has been released back to the NABC (NorthAmerica Biochars Conference, Boulder Colorado, August 2009) for inclusion in their proceedings.
As such, the final version of this document, provided in two formats. One is in MS Word ( .doc ) and [...]

1. What Is Biochar
2. Biochar Can Be Carbon-Negative
3. Environmental Benefits of Biochar
4. Leading Climate Scientists Talk About the Biochar Solution
5. Biochar Production
6. International Biochar Initiative [IBI]
These PDFs print very well in either color or B&W and make excellent 8.5 x 11 hand-out “posters”.
Note: I would like to thank Lopa Brunjes for sending me [...]

Biomass solutions should be clean, affordable, feasible, practical and simultaneously provide as many of these benefits as possible:
1. improve soil health & create compounding increases in annual food production by sequestering in the soil carbon extracted from the atmosphere by photosynthesis then captured in stable form by pyrolysis.
2. improve the conditions and viability of [...]

What I would at like to see are Community Supported Energy projects, CSEs, modeled after Community Supported Agriculture [CSAs]. A CSE, operating within about a 5 mile radius, would convert locally sourced biomass into fuel for carbon negative heat for local buildings. The biochar produced by the heating systems would then [...]

History teaches us that, in New England at least, by the 1830s demand for biomass, primarily wood, had completely outstripped supply. By the end of the civil war, New England was essentially clear cut. Finding new forests to the West, as well as the transition to fossil fuels, allowed us to avoid confronting the obvious [...]