The good folks at “The Economist” went to the North American Biochar Conference 2009 in August. I’ve been bitten by the biochar bug. See my post here, plus the article I wrote for Grist. The virtues of biochar – A new growth industry? has some good insights, many of which were gleaned from the papers given at the conference.
One paper spoke of “…another advantage if poor-world farmers can be brought in. Many of them burn wood, waste and dung indoors for heating and cooking. The soot released into the air as a consequence is also a climate-changer because, being dark, it absorbs heat. Much worse, though, about 1.6m people are killed each year by inhaling it. But pyrolytic stoves produce almost no soot-the carbon is all locked into the biochar. Worldstove, a firm based in Italy, seeks to provide small and simple pyrolising stoves to poor countries.”
I’ve written about the problem of black carbon from cooking a number of times, including here from April. It’s an insidious problem and the Economist is right to note that biochar production is one way to solve it.