ANALYSIS: Biochar forecast for six-fold output increase to 2025

Quantum Commodity Intelligence – The biochar industry has enough capacity in the pipeline to see a six-fold increase in output between now and 2025. However, achieving that potential will require many investments, preliminary results from an industry survey show.

The full survey by the International Biochar Initiative (IBI), the industry's main trade group, will be published in March, but a preview was presented at the US Biochar Initiative (USBI) annual conference in Sacramento, US, last week.

Myles Gray, programme director at USBI, told the conference producers have pencilled in 2.7 million tonnes (t) of biochar output in 2025, a more than six-fold increase from the 355,000 t seen in 2023, due to government subsidies and strong interest from buyers in the voluntary carbon markets (VCMs). The data is 'self reported' and as such may prove optimistic, cautioned Gray, while a conference attendee told Quantum the figures are highly dependent on investments that may not materialise.

Nonetheless, the sector has significant momentum with more than 600 delegates present at the conference, the first time the event gathered so many delegates. The event saw participation from dairy and sugar manufacturers, among others, looking to understand if they can optimise operations by transforming a source of waste – in their case, manure, bagasse and rice hulls – into a valuable product that yields carbon credits.

Quantum also spoke to a local forest service searching for a new outlet for its 'wood thinnings' following the closure of local sawmills for economic reasons. "We now find ourselves with 3 million tonnes of spare wood on our hands. Biochar could be a very interesting market… Our concern is that biochar projects are too small given the amount of biomass we have," the forester said.

One pyrolysis manufacturer said: "The types of people who come to this conference has changed over the years. With the VCM, we see a lot of companies looking to finance several facilities and are looking for a technology partner longer term."

Biochar is produced by processing biomass in a heat-intensive pyrolysis plant, with the resulting carbon-rich material added to soil where it locks up carbon and also acts as an organic, low-carbon fertiliser. It is currently the largest form of carbon dioxide removal (CDR) in the market.

Most of the biochar capacity growth is likely to happen in North America, which has a significant surplus of available feedstock and has a US government scheme to subsidise biochar application in soils, called the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), adopted in 2022. NRCS Code 336 subsidises a large portion of the cost of buying biochar, with the rate differing in each state based on the amount of biochar used.

Biochar pivot

Carbon Streaming, a Canadian investor into carbon projects, said it has increasingly pivoted its business towards biochar and other CDR technologies in recent months following a fall in the price of some offsets, such as avoided deforestation (REDD+).

The financier typically invests between $3-5 million per project for around 5,000 t/year of biochar production, equivalent to 20 to 40% of the capital stack, said Alec Kushnir, the company's head of investments and origination, at the event.

The company prefers to focus on larger projects that have already secured long-term contracts for their feedstock and have identified outlets for their biochar. "For biochar we see the most attractive opportunity in the US because of the government programmes... and buyers are interested in buying credits that are in a location where they have operations," Kushnir said. "On the carbon credit side, bigger is always better... Buyers have limited capacity to do due diligence. They're not interested in looking at 30, 40 projects."

However, there remains little knowledge about biochar among farmers – the main use case at the moment – and the price of the material remains far more expensive than fossil-based alternatives such as lime and fertilisers. "Farmers have heard that biochar is a miracle product and want to try it out, but when they realise how much it costs, they give up very quickly. Most farmers are focused on the next growing season, they can't really afford to wait several years to see the benefits on their soils," said one industry participant.

In Canada, which is a significant producer of charcoal – a product closely associated with biochar – there are vast mounds of biochar with no end markets in sight. "There is a huge amount of biochar produced by charcoal producers that doesn't meet their specifications. You're talking mountains and mountains of biochar. But it's too expensive to package and transport to the farmers, and producers still want high prices," the participant also said.

Carbon credits

The USBI's Gray said: "This comes through very clearly to us that (biochar material) markets are probably the top priority for our organisations. And in my view, the key limitation to really scaling this industry rapidly is end-use markets.

In some ways it's a race to grow these markets faster than production capacities grow. We need to make sure there's a place for all the biochar that gets produced. And we need to make sure there's a place that will pay for that biochar."

Meanwhile, the demand for spot biochar carbon credits is said to be high, but this reflects demand of just 200,000 tonnes of CO2 equivalent last year, and some developers are concerned that the voluntary nature of the market will prove a liability longer-term.

The large majority of attendees said biochar material prices are bound to fall further over time as producers increasingly use carbon credits to finance the practice. This could become increasingly true if carbon registries tighten the additionality criteria - the burden of proof that carbon credits are needed to finance a biochar project – further in future, which is expected by several market participants.

Some large producers are said to have failed due diligence by Microsoft, the sector's largest buyer, for this very reason. To date, only 58% of biochar respondents to the IBI survey said they have sold carbon credits, highlighting the significant potential to grow, said Gray.

A long-term industry observer said: "The carbon market has changed everything, in the last few years we started seeing financiers enter biochar because of the carbon credits. Before it was just seen as this goofy idea run by odd people, but we're now a serious industry." Financiers often look for multiple revenue streams – carbon credits, biochar, heat/power sale – before investing in a biochar project.

"If you have multiple streams of revenue, whether it be carbon, biochar, any kind of other ancillary products, you're getting tipping fees to create the biochar or you're creating bio-oil from the syngas, that's going to be very helpful from a project finance perspective," said Tanner Martin from Ameris Bank. "And it allows you a little bit more flexibility on the contracting side if you say, hey, we don't necessarily have the fixed price contract on the biochar, but we're also selling all of these other ancillary products."

Conference participants agreed that the supply of biomass waste is not an issue, but that logistics play a key role in making a project economic or not. Biomass sources can be wet or situated in faraway locations, meaning developers will not always be able to retrieve them easily. Therefore, developers often choose to focus on spare supply from local sawmills or wood waste that is easily accessible.

Another aspect for investors is the ability of a given project to scale over time. "We're looking for projects that have expansion opportunities there right on site preferably because that's the easiest and the fastest ways to get that volume up," said Carbon Streaming's Kushnir. "But obviously if they have identified opportunities in other locations with feedstock that's good as well," he added.

Falling carbon prices

There is also an expectation among many developers that the price of carbon credits is bound to fall over time due to the expected increase in supply and the low willingness to pay among carbon credit buyers outside the tech industry (most carbon offsets trade in the $1-$30/tCO2 range). For many carbon offset buyers, biochar carbon credits remain far too expensive, making brokers hesitant about including these as part of their portfolio.

It is unclear if the industry can remain profitable if the price of both the biochar and the associated carbon credits falls over time, even with the economies of scale that are expected to be gained from the larger projects in the pipeline.

"We don't expect the prices for our biochar carbon credits to remain high forever. We do expect them to drop off once more supply comes in...this is the time to lock in those contracts," said Carbon Streaming's Kushnir. "The prices are coming off where they are now, but still remaining healthy enough to support projects. For the next five years, we see basically more demand than supply in the market, and that's key and it's one of the bright spots in the carbon market."

MSCI Carbon, formerly known as Trove Research, said in a note last week that biochar carbon credit prices are likely to soften between now and 2026, before potentially strengthening up to 2035, based on its economic models. MSCI also pointed out that competition for biomass feedstock is likely to be high with other industries in future, including biofuels.

"We calculate that if the global airline industry were to use 10% sustainable aviation fuel in its fuel mix, it would take up most of the sustainable biomass supply around the world – leaving little for biochar," warned MSCI.