Stockholm’s Biochar Project aims to reduce carbon emissions by enabling citizens to be part of carbon sequestration. Residents will provide plant waste to the city, which will produce biochar – a charcoal-like product that can sequester carbon in soil for thousands of years. Biochar, when placed in plant beds, improves soil structure, encourages plant growth, and helps to purify stormwater runoff. Additionally, a by-product of the biochar production process is pyrolysis gas, which will be used to generate energy for the city’s district heating system. While there are examples of biochar use across Europe, Stockholm is implementing the first large-scale collaboration between local authorities and citizens in the generation of the product. Stockholm’s first physical biochar plant opened in March 2017—and four more are planned to be completed by the end of 2018. The City anticipates these five plants will produce 7,000 tons of biochar by 2020, sequestering 25,200 tons of CO2 (the equivalent of taking 3,500 cars off the road) and producing a corresponding 25,200-megawatt hours of energy. This project has the potential to take citizen engagement to a new and self-perpetuating level. That’s because citizens won’t only contribute to the process (as they traditionally have with recycling), they will also reap the benefits by taking home garden-boosting biochar.
LanzaTech captures and reuses carbon, transforming industrial waste products into resources through a unique gas fermentation technology.
LanzaTech has developed a biological process in which microbes convert industrial waste gases into fuel and chemical products. The company uses an ancient strain of bacteria that evolved living around hydrothermal vents, which produce a similar concoction of gases to those from today’s industry. Through a natural fermentation process, these bacteria grow to produce bioethanol and chemical products.
The solution mitigates carbon emissions from industry and produces low-carbon fuels without adversely impacting food production. In Shanghai, China’s largest steel conglomerate, Baosteel, and the Chinese Academy of Sciences have constructed a plant using LanzaTech’s gas fermentation technology for the production of fuel ethanol from steel mill waste gases.