Research Library

The authors' combined statistical and economic models on specific aspects and properties of biochar will be useful for future field experiment proposals, farmers purchasing biochar, and decision-makers working to incentivize agricultural advances. In GCB-Bioenergy, October 8, 2020, https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/gcbb.12765

The authors examine the role that government policy can play in accelerating production and use of biochar at commercial scale, such as providing commercial financial incentives, nonfinancial policy support and research and development funding. The article also includes broad recommendations for the development of policy that maximizes the net benefits of biochar adoption.

Regional air quality and health cost models are used to assess how reductions in soil nitric oxide (NO) emissions from the use of biochar could influence U.S. air quality and health costs.

The environmental and economic gains of biochar application in agricultural soils are the focus of this study.

In a presentation at the 2016 Biochar Initiative conference, the author described her study, which suggested that significant health costs could be avoided through the use of biochar at high-activity agricultural sites near relatively high-population areas: http://bit.ly/2jYGnGw

Biochar soil amendment is a sustainable land management strategy that has multiple potential long-term environmental and agricultural benefits. However, wide acceptance of this strategy is hampered by several factors, including its economics. This analysis considers the cost of biochar production at different facility scales with a variety of co-products (e.g., energy); the preliminary results of the research show that amending agricultural soils with biochar may reduce public health costs.

Biofuels increasingly have been viewed as a means to secure the future of rural communities that traditionally depend on cultivation of food crops. Yet using certain types of biomass – in particular, food crops – for fuel also raises a number of environmental and social concerns.

On November 30, the EPA announced the final Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) for 2015 and 2016, which increases the required amount of biofuel and corn-ethanol blended into fossil fuels. Ghasideh Pourhashem, postdoctoral research fellow in the Center for Energy Studies, examines how the energy industry can plan to meet the new RFS.

This study affirms that employing strategies to maintain soil organic carbon stock early within a biofuel program supports climate change mitigation. Such strategies can guide farmers to best manage soil carbon within the biofuel production life cycle.

If the right kinds of policies are in place, biofuel-generating facilities will have the opportunity to function profitably in the long run given the variety of co-products they can generate in addition to producing biofuel, writes Ghasideh Pourhashem, postdoctoral research fellow at the Center for Energy Studies, in a new Forbes blog.