Biochar Academy
Answering your burning questions.
Most coffee folks come out of an introduction to biochar webinar with the same questions: what machine do I buy, how much will I make, how do I get certified. The Academy answers those, and the dozen questions that come right after.
Modules
What is biochar?
From coffee residue to stable carbon. The indigenous Amazonian Terra Preta soils proved the concept and modern technology refined the process. Pyrolysis versus combustion, the long-lived and shorter-lived carbon fractions, and why biochar is not the same as charcoal.
What is a pyrolyzer?
The three equipment categories coffee projects typically use: earthen kilns at the farm, mid-size mobile reactors for a single farm or co-op, or continuous reactors at the mill. We discuss carbon market standards for equipment in biochar projects.
How biochar helps the climate
Biochar is a real climate solution. How much carbon a project can actually remove, why we trust the long-lived fraction, and the four ways the methane from pyrolysis is compensated.
Soil inoculation: making biochar work
Raw biochar in soil is a sponge and requires inoculation: charging biochar with compost, manure, or fertilizer before it goes in the field. Practical advice for inoculating biochar before it touches the field.
Composting and coffee pulp
Coffee pulp releases methane if left to rot. Composted properly it becomes the most useful soil amendment the farm produces, and a natural carrier for biochar. How most projects sequence pulp, biochar, and compost.
Is this expensive? Can any farmer do this?
Capital investment ranges across the three equipment scales, and project earnings vary with farm context and production. What a project can earn, who can do it today, and who should probably wait a season.
How biochar carbon credits work
A kilo of biochar in soil can become a credit on a public registry. Who buys the credits, how the two market tiers price, and what a buyer can and cannot claim.
The five outcomes, in depth
Biochar can lead to improved yield, incomes, livelihoods, and carbon removal and reductions. Each outcome with its agronomic logic, the evidence base, and the open questions we keep finding in project updates.
More modules coming. Want one earlier? Tell us what you’re stuck on.