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Vortrag
An Economic Assessment of Soil Carbon Sequestration with Biochar in Germany

Isabel Teichmann


22nd Annual Conference of the European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists : EAERE 2016
Zürich, Schweiz, 22.06.2016 - 25.06.2016


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Abstract:
Biochar is a carbon-rich solid obtained from the heating of biomass in the (near) absence of oxygen in a process called pyrolysis. Its soil incorporation is increasingly discussed as a means to sequester carbon in soils and, thus, to help mitigate climate change. When deployed in agricultural soils in Germany, it has been found by Teichmann (2014a, b) that slow-pyrolysis biochar from a wide variety of feedstocks – together with the use of the pyrolysis by-products (liquids and gases) as renewable sources of energy – could lead to an annual mitigation of up to 10.2 million tonnes of carbon-dioxide equivalents by 2030 and of up to 10.6 million tonnes by 2050. To analyze whether this technically feasible greenhouse-gas mitigation potential is also economically viable, we calculate the corresponding greenhouse-gas mitigation costs and construct so-called marginal abatement cost curves. Thereby, we find that about 3.1 million tonnes of carbon-dioxide equivalents could be abated in 2030 at costs below €45 per tonne of carbon dioxide and nearly 3.8 million tonnes in 2050 at costs below €75 per tonne of carbon dioxide.

Abstract

Biochar is a carbon-rich solid obtained from the heating of biomass in the (near) absence of oxygen in a process called pyrolysis. Its soil incorporation is increasingly discussed as a means to sequester carbon in soils and, thus, to help mitigate climate change. When deployed in agricultural soils in Germany, it has been found by Teichmann (2014a, b) that slow-pyrolysis biochar from a wide variety of feedstocks – together with the use of the pyrolysis by-products (liquids and gases) as renewable sources of energy – could lead to an annual mitigation of up to 10.2 million tonnes of carbon-dioxide equivalents by 2030 and of up to 10.6 million tonnes by 2050. To analyze whether this technically feasible greenhouse-gas mitigation potential is also economically viable, we calculate the corresponding greenhouse-gas mitigation costs and construct so-called marginal abatement cost curves. Thereby, we find that about 3.1 million tonnes of carbon-dioxide equivalents could be abated in 2030 at costs below €45 per tonne of carbon dioxide and nearly 3.8 million tonnes in 2050 at costs below €75 per tonne of carbon dioxide.



JEL-Classification: Q15;Q24;Q54
Keywords: Biochar, agriculture, Germany, climate change, soil carbon sequestration, mitigation costs, marginal abatement cost curves
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