🤔 How much carbon removal will biochar deliver? 🤔

📊 In a recent poll, over 500 of you weighed in on what CDR tech will deliver the most volume in 2030. The clear winner: biochar carbon removal (57%), followed by BECCS (27%), and far ahead of enhanced weathering (10%) and DACCS (7%).

🏭 I was surprised by this to be honest: I personally expect BECCS to lead by 2030, assuming most of the currently planned large-scale (200Kt-600Kt/year) projects - almost exclusively in Europe - will be built.

🤓 Let’s use this as an opportunity, however, to remind everyone of the sheer potential of BCR - a separate post on BECCS shall come soon. Some helpful data points for you all:

▪️To date, BCR has delivered 514Kt, or 83%, of all durable CDR (CDR.fyi)

▪️The real number might actually be much higher: as much as 1Mt of CDR in 2023 alone (International Biochar Initiative)

▪️Exomad Green - the world’s largest CDR company - is on track to deliver 500Kt per year from 2026. I would also bet that they will be the first company in the world to deliver a megaton/year - and before 2030.

▪️In Europe, BCR delivered 130Kt in 2023 and is on track to deliver 2.3Mt by 2030 and 50Mt by 2040 (Biochar Europe)

▪️A recent EU report on CDR put BCR’s potential for 2050 at 70Mt-200Mt, second only to BECCS (European Scientific Advisory Board on Climate Change)

🌍 Here is what makes me so confident in BCR’s growth potential: it is based in today’s already strong market reality, it depends less on huge government incentives, and it is decentralised / distributed across hundreds of companies all around the world.

🙏 My urgent call to action: can we please, please, please stop referencing outdated models and studies - which I keep seeing - that put BCR’s potential as “low” and often much lower than other CDR approaches?

❓ What is your take? Can BCR live up to its potential?

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