Potentials, Limitations, Co-Benefits, and Trade-Offs of Biochar Applications to Soils for Climate Change Mitigation

Abstract

Biochar is one of the most affordable negative emission technologies (NET) at hand for future large-scale deployment of carbon dioxide removal (CDR), which is typically found essential to stabilizing global temperature rise at relatively low levels. Biochar has also attracted attention as a soil amendment capable of improving yield and soil quality and of reducing soil greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. In this work, we review the literature on biochar production potential and its effects on climate, food security, ecosystems, and toxicity. We identify three key factors that are largely affecting the environmental performance of biochar application to agricultural soils: (1) production condition during pyrolysis, (2) soil conditions and background climate, and (3) field management of biochar. Biochar production using only forest or crop residues can achieve up to 10% of the required CDR for 1.5 ∘ C pathways and about 25% for 2 ∘ C pathways; the consideration of dedicated crops as biochar feedstocks increases the CDR potential up to 15–35% and 35–50%, respectively. A quantitative review of life-cycle assessment (LCA) studies of biochar systems shows that the total climate change assessment of biochar ranges between a net emission of 0.04 tCO 2 eq and a net reduction of 1.67 tCO 2 eq per tonnes feedstock. The wide range of values is due to different assumptions in the LCA studies, such as type of feedstock, biochar stability in soils, soil emissions, substitution effects, and methodological issues. Potential trade-offs between climate mitigation and other environmental impact categories include particulate matter, acidification, and eutrophication and mostly depend on the background energy system considered and on whether residues or dedicated feedstocks are used for biochar production. Overall, our review finds that biochar in soils presents relatively low risks in terms of negative environmental impacts and can improve soil quality and that decisions regarding feedstock mix and pyrolysis conditions can be optimized to maximize climate benefits and to reduce trade-offs under different soil conditions. However, more knowledge on the fate of biochar in freshwater systems and as black carbon emissions is required, as they represent potential negative consequences for climate and toxicity. Biochar systems also interact with the climate through many complex mechanisms (i.e., surface albedo, black carbon emissions from soils, etc.) or with water bodies through leaching of nutrients. These effects are complex and the lack of simplified metrics and approaches prevents their routine inclusion in environmental assessment studies. Specific emission factors produced from more sophisticated climate and ecosystem models are instrumental to increasing the resolution and accuracy of environmental sustainability analysis of biochar systems and can ultimately improve the characterization of the heterogeneities of varying local conditions and combinations of type feedstock, conversion process, soil conditions, and application practice.

Biochar como tecnología de emisión negativa frente al cambio climático

“…Adaptado de Woolf et al, 2010. de cultivo, baja disponibilidad de nutrientes, problemas de toxicidad en el suelo, entre otros (Carvalho, 2017;Rickson et al, 2015). En estos casos el biochar juega un papel de agente encalado para evitar la degradación del suelo (Fidel et al, 2017;Tisserant y Cherubini, 2019).…”

“…Sin embargo, en los casos de plaguicidas reduce su biodegradación y podría afectar a organismos no objetivos (Khalid et al, 2020). Por otro lado, existe poca literatura sobre las emisiones de carbón negro (Braun et al, 2020) y de cuál es la interacción final del biochar con los sistemas de agua dulce (Tisserant y Cherubini, 2019), lo que podría implicar limitaciones para la mitigación del cambio climático y el riesgo de toxicidad respectivamente.…”

“…Ante esta problemática, es necesario optar por tecnologías de emisiones negativas (NET) que sean accesibles, eficientes y eviten generar daños para el ambiente (Tisserant y Cherubini, 2019), como la bioenergía con captura y almacenamiento de carbono (Gambhir y Tavoni, 2019), forestación y reforestación, meteorización mejorada (Fawzy et al, 2020) y el biochar (Smith, 2016). Ante ello, el biochar no solo representa una alternativa para aumentar la fertilidad del suelo y el secuestro de carbono (Zimmerman, 2010;Jindo et al, 2014), sino también una estrategia para disminuir los gases de efecto invernadero y evitar la degradación del suelo para mantener la seguridad alimentaria (Gomes et al, 2019).…”

Holistic Assessment of Biochar and Brown Coal Waste as Organic Amendments in Sustainable Environmental and Agricultural Applications

“…Several studies have investigated the soil, air and water quality benefits of biochar, but consensus on its effects on soil productivity is still lacking as there have been reports of mixed crop yield responses ranging from insignificant, minor or extreme negative and positive effects (Jeffery et al 2017;Chen et al 2018;Tisserant and Cherubini 2019). On the other hand, the literature on the impact of BCW amendment on crop productivity is sparse.…”

Changes in quantity and quality of organic matter in soil after application of poultry litter and poultry litter biochar—5-year field experiment

“…In addition, taking into account biochar ageing in soil and the resulting changes in its properties, it is fully justified and necessary to monitor the material effect on soil properties in experiences conducted for many years. There are also data reporting no significant change or even negative effects after biochar application [15]. Also, it should be emphasised that the number of studies on the effect of biochar on the humus compound transformation is very small.…”