‘THE WILD, WILD WEST’

Biochar is building momentum in Boulder County, but it still has something to prove

BY WILL MATUSKA

James Gaspard sold his electric and hybrid bus company and bought 50 acres of land in the mountains west of Fort Collins to “get away from everything.”

Then the pine beetles came and “wiped everything out.”

“This company was trying to figure out what to do with the dead trees, and how to make a marketable product and solve a problem,” he says.

Gaspard founded Biochar Now in 2011, using the excess pine beetle kill on his property to produce the charcoal-like substance biochar, which can sequester carbon and improve soil quality and plant health.

Biochar isn’t new; it’s been produced by people in the Amazon basin for more than 2,500 years. But using the product at scale to help mitigate the climate crisis is giving biochar new demand.

More than a decade after starting Berthoud-based Biochar Now, Gaspard says interest in biochar is at an all-time high.

“The momentum is there, and investors are throwing money at this industry,” he says.

Boulder County is exploring how biochar could help with its circular economy initiatives and fire mitigation goals — two of the County’s five Climate Innovation Fund recipients produce biochar (Biochar Now and Takachar), and there’s a pilot project being drafted by the County and Denver Water to turn nearly 100 tons of woody material from the Gross Reservoir expansion into biochar.

At the state level, a bill (HB 1069) was introduced to the Colorado House of Representatives on Jan. 19 that would create a working group to study using biochar to plug old oil and gas wells.

But despite the buzz, biochar is still a developing industry and its markets, production methods and uses are being established, standardized and researched.

Sarah Federman, senior science analyst at Carbon Direct, a company that helps organizations reach their climate goals, helped Boulder County choose the recipients of its Climate Innovation Fund.

“[Biochar] needs a little bit of work to scale [up], but the potential [benefits] in terms of climate and community are enormous,” she says.

Taking Your Breath Away

Biochar is produced by putting organic material through pyrolysis, which heats the biomass in the absence of oxygen.

While you can technically use any organic material, Biochar Now’s site in Berthoud is designed to use waste wood like pallets, dead trees or other forest trimmings for its feedstock. It also has expanding operations in Texas and North Carolina that will use treated wood such as railroad ties and telephone poles.