Biochar may be an unfamiliar term to Durango denizens, but maybe not for long.
It is the generic term for charcoal that is used as a soil amendment, and is commonly made from wood and other plant material that has undergone pyrolysis. In other words, the organic material is subjected to high temperature and pressure in the absence of oxygen. The process releases combustible gases and liquids and leaves a carbon-rich solid called char.
Its use is not new. Native people in the Amazon basin were using it to enrich soil long before the arrival of Europeans, and produced it by covering smoldering piles of plant material in pits or trenches. The remaining char, added to the nutrient-poor soil along with bones and manure, resulted in terra preta, literally “black earth” in Portuguese.
Biochar is popular today for its remarkable ability to retain water and nutrients and increase the fertility of acidic soils. Biochar is also notable for its ability to sequester carbon, a handy trick in an age acutely aware of the role carbon is likely playing in our changing climate. When wood is burned, carbon is released into the atmosphere. When it undergoes pyrolysis, the carbon remains in char.
Author Bill McKibben describes biochar’s potential: “If you could continually turn a lot of organic material into biochar, you could, over time, reverse the history of the last 200 years. We can, literally, start sucking some of the carbon that our predecessors have poured into the atmosphere down through our plants and stalks and stick it back into the ground.”
A new, local twist in the biochar story is a plan by J.R. Ford to build a gasification plant near Pagosa Springs to produce electricity and biochar from trees harvested from nearby forests. He wants to chip low-value trees from crowded stands that need to be thinned. Right now, forest officials say that 90,000 acres of harvestable Ponderosa pine are available in the Dolores District alone. Trees damaged by drought and beetle-kill may also be available, bark and needles included.
Ford, who describes himself as “a businessman trying to use a viable financial model to solve a natural resources problem with a community-scale approach,” wants to use the gas produced in his plant to generate electricity for purchase by local electric cooperatives. That keeps his entire plan pretty close to home, jobs included.
He has encountered a significant bump in the road, however. While La Plata Electric is on board, its principal power supplier, Tri-State Generation and Transmission, is not. “I had a preliminary agreement with LPEA,” Ford said, “But Tri-State blocked us from going forward.”
The reason why is subject to speculation because Tri-State has not explained publicly. At this point, we urge them to do so, especially in light of evidence that biochar can supply another benefit in its use in the reclamation of soil damaged by mining.
All the specific details of Ford’s plan should be scrutinized before he gets a green light, but the local market for electricity should be open to him. Tri-State cannot hide beneath the covers and pretend that plans to produce alternative energy will simply go away if ignored. Doing so only ensures that Tri-State will likely go the way of the ancient forests and dinosaurs that, eons ago, died and turned into the coal it is so dependent upon.
