Google Strikes World's Largest Biochar Carbon Removal Deal 26
Google has partnered with Indian startup Varaha to purchase 100,000 tons of carbon dioxide removal credits by 2030, marking its largest deal in India and the largest involving biochar, a carbon removal solution made from biomass. TechCrunch reports: The offtake agreement credits will be delivered to Google by 2030 from Varaha's industrial biochar project in the western Indian state of Gujarat, the two firms said on Thursday. [...] Biochar is produced in two ways: artisanal and industrial. The artisanal method is community-driven, where farmers burn crop residue in conical flasks without using machines. In contrast, industrial biochar is made using large reactors that process 50-60 tons of biomass daily.
Varaha's project will generate industrial biochar from an invasive plant species, Prosopis Juliflora, using its pyrolysis facility in Gujarat. The invasive species impacts plant biodiversity and has overtaken grasslands used for livestock. Varaha will harvest the plant and make efforts to restore native grasslands in the region, the company's co-founder and CEO Madhur Jain said in an interview. Once the biochar is produced, a third-party auditor will submit their report to Puro.Earth to generate credits. Although biochar is seen as a long-term carbon removal solution, its permanence can vary between 1,000 and 2,500 years depending on production and environmental factors.
Jain told TechCrunch that Varaha tried using different feedstocks and different parameters within its reactors to find the best combination to achieve permanence close to 1,600 years. The startup has also built a digital monitoring, reporting and verification system, integrating remote sensing to monitor biomass availability. It even has a mobile app that captures geo-tagged, time-stamped images to geographically document activities, including biomass excavation and biochar's field application. With its first project, Varaha said it processed at least 40,000 tons of biomass and produced 10,000 tons of biochar last year.
Varaha's project will generate industrial biochar from an invasive plant species, Prosopis Juliflora, using its pyrolysis facility in Gujarat. The invasive species impacts plant biodiversity and has overtaken grasslands used for livestock. Varaha will harvest the plant and make efforts to restore native grasslands in the region, the company's co-founder and CEO Madhur Jain said in an interview. Once the biochar is produced, a third-party auditor will submit their report to Puro.Earth to generate credits. Although biochar is seen as a long-term carbon removal solution, its permanence can vary between 1,000 and 2,500 years depending on production and environmental factors.
Jain told TechCrunch that Varaha tried using different feedstocks and different parameters within its reactors to find the best combination to achieve permanence close to 1,600 years. The startup has also built a digital monitoring, reporting and verification system, integrating remote sensing to monitor biomass availability. It even has a mobile app that captures geo-tagged, time-stamped images to geographically document activities, including biomass excavation and biochar's field application. With its first project, Varaha said it processed at least 40,000 tons of biomass and produced 10,000 tons of biochar last year.
Re:Greenwashing (Score:4, Insightful)
Is searching the internet really that difficult? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Re: Greenwashing (Score:2, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
do what you can (Score:2)
Re: Greenwashing (Score:2)
"Artisanal Biochar" is how they advertise this. No mention of where the energy comes from, to turn trees into charcoal.
Are they having local farmers build old-fashioned charcoal piles? Ifcsi, what's to keep the farmers from then burning the charcoal?
Or are they transporting the trees to a central facility, and udingcsn industrial process? If so, where does the energy come from (India has lots of coal), and what does the energy balance look like?
The point is: none of this information is easily available,
Re: (Score:2)
No mention of where the energy comes from, to turn trees into charcoal.
This is India of that little Nazi, Modi, that we're talking about. Energy comes from cheap russian gas and oil, which they've been buying like crazy in the past 3 years.
Have to wonder (Score:3)
TFA says nothing about the ratio between how much CO2 is released in all stages of making the biochar, and how much it captures. In fact the article is almost devoid of details, and the links it contains seem pretty useless.
However, the article does admit that "Google’s deal with Varaha is minuscule compared with the tech giant’s carbon emissions". So I question the newsworthiness of this puff piece on several points. It all sounds like a nothingburger - and a small one at that.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
in all stages of making the biochar
Except that is a pointless metric, like judging an oil company by the customers setting their oil on fire. A large part of the biochar process involves the involuntary release of CO2 through farming practices. So when you just "all stages" you're including emissions that would exist even if the biochar process didn't.
Why tuned to 1600 years? (Score:2)
Call be crazy, but I'm imagining we'd be doing this if it was feasible. Focusing on a parameter that sounds good in marketing materials seems premature.
Also curious what happens afterward. Is 'biochar' so inert it just sits around doing nothing? Or would this supplant some other source of similar materials?
What happens to those materials across a few decades of use? I seriously doubt anything charcoal based will be useful for 1600 years unless it's a giant brick that we're burying underground. And then
Re: (Score:2)
You're crazy.
Yes, you bury it. The reason you turn it into charcoal first is that it doesn't get decomposed as easily so it's stable longer.
Re: (Score:2)
The idea of biochar, IIRC, comes from the Brazilian rainforest.
Geologists discovered a pre-Columbian layer of sediment they named in the local language "terra preta" or black soil which contained a high concentration of burnt carbon in the timeframe of 1600 years ago, as if an ancient civilisation were aware of the benefits of producing this special charcoal.
Re: (Score:2)
I can't believe what I just read. (Score:3)
FFS, is this really any better than just writing a fictional book about there being no climate change and people think you changed the real world? It's the same stupid idea.
Big companies are all about how much debt they can pile up before going bankrupt. How about instead of carbon credits we issue carbon debts - corporations will love it.
Re: (Score:2)
If you distill every concept down to such a simple level you can make anything look stupid.
Here: "I just read your words." Just words. I didn't attempt to derive meaning, I simplified it to just words, so clearly you communicated nothing.
The biochar process is far more complicated than "I cut down a plant". Do more research.
CALL CENTER issues (Score:1)
Sure, you can get biomass credits for carbon removal...
20 minutes on call-center hold later:
"I am going to now be helping you to be understanding the carbon footprint that your biomass has been removed. This is good for 1500 years. Do not worry. I will be pullint it up soon."
Seriously.
Never heard of biochar before... (Score:1)
It's some an analog of charcoal I imagine?
pile of dog shit (Score:3)
Carbon credits is a fucking, big, steamy pile of dog shit.
CO2 driven extreme climate is driven by consumerism and the market.
The market of carbon credits can not be the answer.
Actually not burning stuff to reduce production of CO2 is the real answer.
Servers and AI = enormous amounts of CO2.
Carbon sequestration is the next pile of dog shit.
Just maybe in the future it might really work well.
It has been a delaying tactic, give us lots of money and we'll get this concept up and running.
Re: (Score:3)
There is no "THE" answer. There are many answers which work in parallel. Carbon credits are an economic tool, punishing those who can't offset their emissions to fund projects which do which would otherwise not go ahead.
The idea that we can as a species be carbon neutral without sequestration is a complete fantasy, so unless you want to give up the goal it has to be part of the solution.
Re: (Score:3)
>Carbon credits is a fucking, big, steamy pile of dog shit.
Definitely a joke.
We burn hydrocarbons for easy energy. This works because there's energy stored in hydrocarbons. The only way to reverse this process and recapture the released carbon is to put that energy back in. Because no process is 100% efficient, it's actually going to take more energy to re-store the carbon than you obtained by releasing it.
In other words, sequestration MUST result in a net release of CO2 if you're only dealing in hyd
Re: (Score:2)
Some math doesn't add up (Score:2)
100,000 tons by 2030 * 2.5 credits/ton does NOT equal 1
Beyond idiotic (Score:1)
1. Find something people were going to do anyway like invasive plant removal
2. Spend energy to go get it and burn it
3. Sell the fake credits to polluters so they can pollute more