📣 Thrilled to share insights from the Biomass Carbon Removal and Storage (#BiCRS) Workshop in Washington DC! 📣

I had the pleasure to attend an interactive workshop co-organised by leading academics and several US government agencies on the potential of BiCRS, with a particular focus on wood harvesting and storage (#WHS), an upcoming and promising carbon dioxide removal (#CDR) technology.

Here are my key #takeaways from the workshop:

🌲 Variety of BiCRS approaches: most of us are familiar with biochar carbon removal (#BCR) and bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (#BECCS). But there are at least a dozen if not more other approaches that utilise waste biomass for carbon removal. Many are still in the early stages, but it was amazing to see all the shots on goal we have with BiCRS.

🌳 Huge biomass availability: estimates put the amount of waste biomass / hazardous fuels in the U.S. at 700 million tons. A lot of this is driven by forest management and thinning. The U.S. Forest Service alone has 139m acres under management. Getting the Forest Service engaged will be central to success.

🔎 Biomass quality matters: we often assume that all biomass is ready to be processed into CDR. But wind, humidity, rain, snow, and frost to substantial damage that can disrupt production. Quality assurance for the biomass itself is a huge and often overlooked issue in BiCRS.

📜 Permitting, permitting, permitting: a recurring theme in CDR, and BiCRS is no exception. Permitting laws are often outdated and not tailored for CDR. It can take months and exorbitant resources to secure even simple permits. Private lands may offer exceptions for pilots, but real scale will only happen with permitting reform at state and federal level.

🤓 The potential of Wood Harvesting and Storage: the main topic of the workshop, WHS is a very attractive option for potentially permanent, high carbon efficiency, distributed, low CAPEX CDR. But a lot of open questions remain, particularly around ecosystem impact and permanence.

💡 Overall, I have been very impressed with this conference. It was smart for leading WHS academics and startups to team up with government agencies in organising this conference. It also feels like a bold move to invite so much criticism and challenges so early on in the development of WHS.

Today, I am heading to the world´s first active WHS project 🎉 - more on that tomorrow.

A huge thanks to the organisers Rory Jacobson, Daniel L. Sanchez, and Ning Zeng. It was a fantastic event. And a shout out to all the speakers and attendees who generously shared their insights with me over the last few days: Charlotte Levy, Jack Andreasen, Toby Bryce, Linda Geiser, Andrew Jones, Jimmy Voorhis, Anu Khan, Ben Rubin, Michael Leitch, Scott Litzelman, Freya Chay, Mariana Ballardin, Yushi Horita, Meron T., Jasmine Yu, Ph.D, Gyami Shrestha, and many others.

Whether you attended or not, what are your thoughts on the topics above? Do they resonate? 🤔💬