Walsh’s research uncovered inOvate, LLC, a robotics developer that has an ocean sweeper on the drawing board that can be deployed from a ship or airplane to make plastic and chemicals bubble to the surface. Once this debris is collected, the Bal-Pac machine, a technology developed by Balboa Pacific Corporation of San Diego, CA, can convert the toxic materials into beneficial byproducts including electricity and biochar (a charcoal-like material used as a soil amendment to sequester carbon from the atmosphere) without generating any pollution.

One of the most exciting new strategies for restoring carbon to depleted soils and sequestering significant amounts of CO2 for 1000 years and more is the use of biochar.

Last month we introduced biochar and the multitude of benefits it may provide. This month we will look specifically at the ability of biochar to sequester carbon. In fact, we will examine the entire biochar production system and its ability to sequester carbon through biochar and other methods in the system.

This research will investigate using crop trials the impact of biochar on soil. Changes to the chemical and physical properties of the soil will be measured before and after biochar addition, and also the yield of crop will be measured. Biochar trial plots will be located in the North West of Cambodia, in Siem Reap

“Terra preta” (Portuguese for “black earth”) are anomalous deposits of deep, rich soil found in large pockets of land throughout the Amazon. Once thought to be 100% comprised of thin, fragile soil that would immediately desertify if the trees were removed, it now turns out there are significant sections of Amazonia where this terra preta is abundant.

Could soil engineered specifically to maximize carbon storage dampen some effects of climate change? Very possibly, while rejuvenating depleted agricultural soils. "We have 6.7 billion people now. We'll have 10 billion in a few more decades. How are we going to feed them if we don't take care of our soils?"

Representatives of IBI and many other biochar supporters have been attending the UNFCCC COP15 meetings in Copenhagen Denmark, which began last week and continue to December 18. As of today, Tuesday 15 December, the draft negotiation text that has been released by the Conference Chairs and Parties is very short on details pertaining to agricultural sector solutions and technologies, but placeholder text is included for domestic agricultural and land use activities of industrialized countries as well as for the financing of cooperative agricultural sector mitigation activities between developed and developing countries.

There is a better alternative than cap and trade, one that would be more efficient and less costly: “fee and dividend.” Under this approach, a gradually rising carbon fee would be collected at the mine or port of entry for each fossil fuel (coal, oil and gas). All of the collected fees would then be distributed to the public.

To offset the increasing CO2 levels, we urgently need to go beyond the goal of achieving carbon neutrality. We must actually become carbon negative, removing CO2 from the atmosphere faster than we are putting there. A number of companies are already developing such carbon-negative technologies that capture CO2 directly from the air. A couple of the more promising innovations include biochar.

For renewable energies, forest waste materials can be burned, chemically converted into liquid fuels such as ethanol, or heated without oxygen to produce bio-oil, bio-char and gasses. Last summer, the Umpqua and Umatilla National Forests coordinated experiments to test one technology, called fast pyrolysis, to heat waste wood chips to produce useful products.

Sustainability scientists from Cornell University will attend the 15th United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, Denmark. Johannes Lehmann, associate professor of soil fertility management and soil biogeochemistry and head of Cornell’s delegation, will speak about carbon-sequestering and soil-amending biochar at three panels Dec. 7, 9 and 12.

Instead of allowing the plant matter to decompose, pyrolysis can be used to seize and store carbon in a much more stable charcoal form known as biochar. Biochar is used to absorb atmospheric CO2 and stores it virtually permanently in a carbon negative process.

The Palaterra project will use waste product from the nearby biogas facility to recycle tons of material into useable feedstock. As a self-proclaimed solution to both global climate change and human hunger, Terra Preta hopes to take the simple act of "composting" to a commercial scale using a rediscovered formula that was thought to be lost with the great Amazonian cultures.

Agricultural Research Service scientists have found that it might be more cost-effective, energy-efficient and environmentally sustainable to use corn stover for generating an energy-rich oil called bio-oil and for making biochar to enrich soils and sequester carbon.

Researchers around the world are trying to economically convert cellulosic biomass such as corn stover into "cellulosic ethanol." But Agricultural Research Service scientists have found that it might be more cost-effective, energy-efficient and environmentally sustainable to use corn stover for generating an energy-rich oil called bio-oil and for making biochar to enrich soils and sequester carbon.

The juwi Group and Joachim Böttcher, head of areal GmbH, today founded the joint venture Palaterra GmbH&Co.KG at juwi’s company headquarters in Wörrstadt, Germany. In this joint venture, juwi and areal together will produce and market a groundbreaking new product, which will make an important contribution not only toward solving world hunger but also to climate protection: Terra Preta, or "dark earth".

In the world of climate change solutions, biochar is the celebrity option ... The industry acknowledges the need for further study, but argues the basics are proven.

In order to combat certain farming practices, he believes governments should subsidize no-till farming and other carbon sequestration technologies. For example, Gore thinks biochar, which is basically porous charcoal, may be able to sequester 40 percent of annual carbon dioxide emissions. He also believes that most of the solutions should be enacted on their merits alone, regardless of their effect on the climate.

The 2009 Bio eConference—“Growing the Bioeconomy: Solutions for Sustainability”—is a 12-state alliance of simultaneous state conferences. Keynote address by James E. Lovelock, Ph.D. One of the world’s most renowned thinkers on global environmental science, Dr. Lovelock has called upon farmers to convert agricultural residues to biochar for incorporation into the soil as the only solution to global climate change.

Agricultural land could be the focus of an "economic opportunity of unparalleled scale", according to the Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists, which has called for a re-write of Australian emissions trading legislation to properly recognise "terrestrial carbon".

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, be used today to create a sustainable system of agriculture in the following 7 critical areas

A temperature increase of two degrees above pre-industrial levels has been proposed as a useful target to prevent dangerous climate change. But curbs on carbon dioxide emissions will not result in cooling for around 1000 years or so. With that in mind a team from the US, India and Kenya has proposed four solutions that are not based on carbon dioxide, can be implemented fast and will produce a climate response within decades.

The speed and scope of global warming is now overtaking even the most sobering predictions of the last report of the Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change, finds a new report issued by the United Nations Environment Programme, entitled "Climate Change Science Compendium 2009." Management alternatives suggested include large-scale translocation or assisted colonization of species; eco-agriculture, in which landscapes are managed to sustain a range of ecosystem services, including food production; and the use of biochar, biologically-derived charcoal that is mixed in soils, increasing fertility and potentially locking up carbon for centuries.