How Climate Marketing Kills Biochar

Quite apart from the fact that we certainly don’t have €2 million available to pay for all that biochar— we also only own 3 hectares of vineyard. So we don’t even have enough land to apply all that biochar. And who does, really? Most city dwellers certainly don’t. In Europe, less than 0.5% of the population owns more than 3 hectares of land. That means 99.5% of Europeans lack sufficient land of their own to offset their CO₂ emissions by applying biochar to it.

We can also look at it from another angle. Europe’s agricultural land — counting the EU as well as non-EU countries like Ukraine, Russia, and Switzerland — totals about 300 million hectares. Divided among the roughly 750 million inhabitants, that works out to around half a hectare per person. Including consumption-based emissions (that is, also counting the carbon footprint of a sneaker made in China but worn in France), Europeans emit an average of 10 to 11 tonnes of CO₂e annually. So, to offset these emissions, each person would need to apply about 5 tonnes of biochar per year. This means every hectare of agricultural land in Europe, from the Urals to the Atlantic, would need to receive 10 tonnes of biochar annually. Over 50 years, that’s 500 tonnes per hectare — forming a 25 cm layer everywhere. Europe would literally rise by a quarter of a metre.

150 billion tonnes of biochar would have to be produced, requiring 750 billion tonnes of biomass. Yet Europe’s 215 million hectares of forest currently hold only about 20 to 25 million tonnes of standing biomass. In other words, Europe’s entire forest would have to regrow more than 35 times over the next 50 years.

As brilliant as biochar is, its potential is nowhere near enough to reverse climate warming unless we also reduce emissions drastically — by at least 90%. Continuing to emit as before — flying to Tokyo for conferences, holidaying in the Caribbean, and not even installing solar panels on the roof — does not make you climate neutral, even if you offset every tonne one-for-one. It’s because the global balance sheet simply doesn’t add up.

So what does that mean? Does biochar no longer make sense? And what about private engagement in carbon sinks and offsetting one’s own emissions — is that all pointless too? Has the climate impact of biochar been exaggerated for years just to inflate the market and attract investor money — investors who are opting out now because they have no market vision beyond the climate talk?

Could it be that focusing biochar marketing too heavily on climate effects has harmed both the biochar market and the climate? Over the past five years, attention has increasingly shifted away from agronomic benefits and toward climate promises. Producers, traders, and journalists alike have lost interest in material properties and the manifestation of biophysical effects. The benefits were taken as self-evident — all that remained was to lobby for favorable recognition in international climate policy.

It’s a bit like promoting Swiss cheese by claiming that only through regularly buying cheese can the poor cows be kept alive — instead of making people want to buy it because it tastes so good.

Of course, biochar has a climate effect — and one that can be precisely certified. It also makes good sense for farmers who use it to close their nutrient and carbon cycles and to strengthen their energy and resource autonomy. But when a biochar producer sells the climate effect of biochar — originally supplied to a farmer — to a medical doctor who uses it to offset a heliski trip to Aspen’s powder or an Easter getaway to Tuscany, then the point of it becomes questionable.

Carbon certificates have given the biochar industry a significant boost. Bankers saw in them a security for approving loans, and investors sensed the prospect of long-term returns. As a result, the amount of biochar available on the market has increased, and manufacturers of pyrolysis equipment have been able to professionalize their technologies— both of which are welcome developments.

But now it’s time to use this market momentum to develop new biochar products for industry and agriculture. Only with high-quality products that guarantee added value to users — and promise nothing beyond that — will the industry survive and grow. Climate certificates are a bonus, and the larger the biochar industry becomes, the greater its climate effect. But we should stop promoting biochar solely on the basis of its climate impact. Without the real, tangible benefits of biochar in industrial and agricultural applications, the industry will collapse long before any measurable climate benefit is achieved.

Marketing that relies on pseudo-profound bullshitting — telling users, buyers, and voters what they supposedly want to hear — has led us precisely to the situation we face today: no one believes a politician, an online seller, an organic farmer, or a climate activist anymore. Like this, we squander every chance we have to save our environment, our social systems, and the climate.