CLIMATE CHANGE--The Urgency of High-Leverage Action

The impacts of climate change are accelerating even faster than previously projected. The dramatic increases in extreme heat and extreme weather, massive wildfires, corral reef die-offs, and a host of other phenomena clearly indicate that previous strategies based on emissions reduction are insufficient. To stop and ultimately reverse global warming, we must now find ways to recapture much of the carbon that has been released through burning fossil fuels and other processes.

The critical role of carbon sequestration

A host of global scientific assessments all point to the critical importance of accelerating the recapturing of carbon from the atmosphere. Recent studies indicate that the only viable path to maintaining climatic conditions capable of supporting the human populations will depend on gigaton levels (billions of tons) carbon being captured and sequestered annually.

Six Strategies to Sequester Carbon

Six options to sequester carbon are widely recognized as the most promising to achieve this vital objective. Of these, three have never been successfully achieved at scale (direct-air carbon capture; enhanced weathering; ocean fertilization).

1. Afforestation & Reforestation

Tree growth takes up CO2 from the atmosphere.

2. Bioenergy with Carbon Capture & Storage

Plants turn CO2 into biomass that fuel power plants. CO2 captured and stored underground.

3. Ocean Fertilization

Iron or other nutrients are applied to the ocean increasing CO2 absorption.

4. Biochar

Partially oxidized biomass is added to soils absorbing additional CO2.

6. Direct Air Capture

CO2 is removed from ambient air through chemical processes and stored or converted into products.

5. Enhanced Weathering

Crushed minerals are applied to soil for chemical CO2 absorption.

The Trollworks’ System

The Trollworks Bioenergy + Biochar system combines two of the three proven sequestration pathways—BECCS and biochar—to create one of the first integrated approaches utilizing both of these potentially high leverage solutions. The Trollworks system is designed to simultaneously displace the use of high emissions fossil fuels and produce a sequestered carbon byproduct that can be used to leverage additional carbon capture. A unique feature of the Trollworks bioenergy + biochar system is its focus on modularity, scalability, and a distributed approach to solution deployment. This enables facilities to be developed more rapidly, more closely aligned with local resource characteristics and volumes, and more accessible and beneficial to local economies.

Further reading on bioenergy and biochar

Resources

What is Bioenergy + Carbon Capture & Sequestration (BeCCS)?

Bioenergy typically refers to converting the energy captured by plants through photosynthesis and converting this into energy usable in human systems. Most BECCS systems are intended to use biomass—vegetative material that is either grown for this purpose or is a waste byproduct of other agricultural operations e.g. crop wastes, construction wood waste etc—to generate energy. This is typically done through burning the biomass and generating electricity with the steam generated by this combustion.

The premise of most BeCCS systems is the assertion that the carbon released from this burning process can be immediately captured and then pumped into some sort of huge long-term storage site to that it would not be released into the atmosphere. The only spaces big enough to receive these huge volumes of greenhouse gases would have to be subterranean caverns.

The stretches of logic that this implies are obvious…

What is Biochar?

Recognized as a potential climate stabilizing tool for decades, biochar has been used by humans as a resource for millennia. The potential leverage this unique material can create is only beginning to be fully understood.

Biochar is listed directly as one of the top 100 climate stabilizing strategies In Paul Hawkin’s internationally recognized book Drawdown. If integrated into a number of the other 100 strategies (regenerative agriculture; conservation agriculture; clean cookstoves; composting) biochar could contribute to as much as 75 gigatons of carbon sequestration by 2050—a combined impact making it one of the urgent drawdown strategies most powerful tools.