Event: Biochar – How to scale it?

When: 28th March from 10:00-12:00 CET

Where: Teams!
Besprechungs-ID: 368 048 687 679
Passcode: ozof36 




Biochar -How to scale it?

Biochar is a soil amendment, which supports plant growth, in particular in the tropics and subtropics. Across the tropics, its application to soils results in an average crop yield increase of 25%, while on a global average crop yields increase by 15%. Concurrently, biochar stores carbon over extensive time periods in soils due to the chemical conformation of the biochar carbon. Biochar is the resulting product from pyrolysis of biomass.

Biochar is primarily a soil conditioner that enables soils to better store and deliver nutrients and water to plants. Thereby, biochar itself is not a fertilizer, but it increases the capacity of soils to absorb nutrients from fertilizers – the soils’ cation exchange capacity is increased – and retain them in a plant available manner, which is particularly relevant for phosphorus in many tropical soils. Unlike most soil organic carbon, biochar is very recalcitrant against decomposition so that the structural amendment that it adds to soils stays there for long time periods.

Worldwide, the technical mitigation potential through biochar application is estimated at 2.6 (0.2-6.6) Gt CO2eq/year, out of which 1.1 (0.3-1.8) Gt CO2eq/year can be realized at costs of up to 100 USD/t CO2eq.

Despite those positive effects, scaling of biochar beyond individual projects has not yet taken off. Reasons might be that increased crop yields alone do not justify costs for production and application of biochar or a general lack of awareness on different levels from individual land users to policy makers.




Moderator:

  • Niels Thevs (GIZ)

Welcoming Words: 

  • Dr. Paul Luu (4p1000 Initiative)

Speakers:

In this event, we want to explore bottlenecks of the scaling of biochar and options how to overcome the same through the following presentations:

  • Luo Juan, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences - Application Status and Prospect of biochar technology in China
  • Aqeel Rizvi - CIFOR-ICRAF - Biochar and Agriculture
  • Dries Roobroeck, IITA - Biochar use in small holder settings in Kenya – how to expand further
  • Johannes Meyer zu Drewer- Ithaka Institute - The Global Artisan C-Sink: Promoting and scaling biochar through carbon sink certification and valorisation.

There will be time for questions and discussion!


Please find more information about Biochar on this page!

Find out more about our speakers here:


Luo Juan, PhD

Luo Juan is a senior engineer, master Supervisor, majoring in environmental engineering and working in Institute of Environment and Sustainable Development in Agriculture, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences (IEDA·CAAS). Has been engaging in research and development of agricultural waste recycling technology and equipments for a long time, as well as the green and low-carbon development of agriculture.


Aqeel Hasan Rizvi, PhD

Dr. Aqeel Hasan Rizvi is a Project Manager-Biochar and Integrated Farming System Scientist at CIFOR-ICRAF, Asia Program, New Delhi. He holds a Ph.D. degree in Agriculture sciences. Before joining ICRAF, he served a decade in ICARDA and brings the long experience of working/researching in the field with crops and soil; and dealing with farming communities. He has successfully managed research and development projects funded by international/ national donors and has collaborated with several national institutes (Indian Council of Agricultural Research -ICAR) and universities. He was a researcher at Indian Agricultural Research Institute, PUSA, New Delhi, for over five years in the Chickpea Program. He also worked as Training and Technical Officer at Institute for Micronutrient Technology, Pune, India. His role encompassed the training of farmers for balanced/complete plant nutrition and the prescription of crop nutrition requirements based on soil analysis and plant deficiency symptoms. To his credit, Dr Rizvi has a good number of national and international publications in the form of book chapters, research papers, abstracts, popular articles, etc.


Dries Roobroeck, PhD

Dr. Dries Roobroeck holds a PhD in Applied Biological Sciences from Ghent University which he obtained in December 2012, on a dissertation about the cycling of carbon and nitrogen between soil, plants and atmosphere in undisturbed peatlands of Poland. Shortly after he started working with the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture, first as post-doc and now as scientist with the NRM unit and Central Africa hub, and has been based in Nairobi for eight years. He specializes in the agronomy and ecology of smallholder farming systems in Sub-Saharan Africa with specific focus on soil health, crop production, fertilizer efficiency, climate resilience and carbon drawdown. In particular, he saw that access to clean and modern energy holds back progress while at the same that large amounts of agricultural residues and other low-grade biomass are burnt or dumped that causes much more harm than good. Because of this Dries’ attention was drawn to gasification and biochar systems for value augmentation of excess organic resources that allow to increase rural production and incomes, and mitigate impacts on the climate and broader environment. He continues to push the research and development frontier around green energy and sustainable food production by bringing together know-how, technology and stakeholders.


Johannes Meyer zu Drewer 

Johannes Meyer zu Drewer is researcher at the Ithaka Institute for Carbon Strategies. The Ithaka Institute is an international open-source network for carbon strategies. Ithaka became a leading research collaboration for carbon sequestration and cycling through agronomic methods. The Institute is known for its expertise in production, post-production treatment, and use of biochar. Ithaka established the European Biochar Certificate, the Global Artisan C-Sink standard and is developing further methods for carbon sink accounting and certification.




Contribution by the International Biochar Initiative:

https://biochar-international.org/event/biochar-academy/


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