Charcoal as carbon offset

[andy cobb]

Just read an article in the daily mail ( don't know how to do link, sorry)

A company in Yorkshire is offering to offset carbon dioxide created by air travel etc by burying charcoal in a disused quarry in Yorkshire.

Guess where the charcoal is coming from?

Namibia!

Surely a local sustainable source of bio char could be found without the sea and road miles involved with cross continent travel.

[openspaceman]

49 minutes ago, andy cobb said:

Just read an article in the daily mail ( don't know how to do link, sorry)

A company in Yorkshire is offering to offset carbon dioxide created by air travel etc by burying charcoal in a disused quarry in Yorkshire.

Guess where the charcoal is coming from?

Namibia!

Surely a local sustainable source of bio char could be found without the sea and road miles involved with cross continent travel.

This is simple economics; the price of the charcoal of the required recalcitrance to be a carbon store, delivered to point of deposition is cheaper than anything available locally. This is a voluntary scheme so it's driven by what air travellers are willing to pay. Also it's not waste so probably not subject to regulations concerning waste and landfill.

 

Yes of course there is a sustainable local resource that could make biochar  from vegetation that is currently burned or composted and returns CO2 to the atmosphere.

[andy cobb]

Does anybody know of a company offering bagged bio char enriched compost as a way of offsetting air travel.

If not might be a good business for someone.

[andy cobb]

Peat free, carbon negative, dolphin friendly  compost for growing your avocados on a central London windowsill 

[openspaceman]

28 minutes ago, andy cobb said:

Does anybody know of a company offering bagged bio char enriched compost as a way of offsetting air travel.

If not might be a good business for someone.

Somewhen around 2010 I gave a talk at the University of Kent in Chatham for the EA's soils unity, it was a proposal I had then for combining the output from the firm's thermophylic liquid composting system which took waste food, pasteurised it by self heating and, at the time, paid to inject it into local farm fields. At the same time there was a hiatus  in the period between the ending of NFFO subsidies for the combined heat and power plant we supplied woodchip to and the demand for chip by RHI subsidised heating plant, so woodchip was a glut on the market.

 

The proposal was to pyrolyse woodchip and use the heat to dry the slurry from the food waste plant and combine the two to sell as bagged compost. There were regulatory problems ( mostly due to the varying make up of the slurry as the input was not homogeneous) and the expense of obtaining PA100 accreditation plus an objection from EA for spreading on farmland, no objection for use in private gardens as these are not regulated. The food plant was eventually sold off at a loss to a company that digested waste to biogas and thence generated electricity for the grid in a large internal combustion engine.