posted 4 hours ago
This is from Kelpie Wilson's biochar blog. I suggest that you subscribe if you are interested. She is suggesting ways to get more participation in Biochar. I feel that in urban and suburban areas where trees grow quickly, there are arborists happy to give you chips. However, I think that her blog post here considers that most of the wood that creates giant fires could be used for biochar to prevent fires. However, it is not in urban and suburban areas. What to do?
John S
PDX OR
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The Wildfire Threat and the Biochar Solution
How to scale OUT to scale UP biochar
Kelpie Wilson
Aug 20
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I first heard of biochar, then known only as “Terra Preta de Indio” back in 2006. Two years later, I had a position at the International Biochar Initiative working on communications and project development.
Those were fun and exiting times where I got to meet and interact with the soil and climate scientists who were working on basic biochar research. I learned a tremendous amount about soil biology and chemistry and experimented with various methods of making charcoal in my backyard and using it in my garden.
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I also took part in many discussions about how to build a biochar industry that could implement all of the great ideas that scientists and entrepreneurs had for taking waste biomass and turning it into a product that could build healthy soil and sequester carbon. Technology was always a part of those discussions, but the bigger issue was markets. If we make it, who will come? Who will buy biochar?
What little I know about marketing boils down to this strategy: Sell solutions, not products. That ought to be easy, because what attracted so many people to biochar in the first place was the stack of problems it could address, starting with fixing degraded soil and ending with carbon sequestration, or “fixed” carbon. Biochar as a tool is like a Swiss Army knife. I called it a “carbon wrench” in a fact sheet I put together a few years ago:
This long list ought to convince everyone that the world needs biochar, now, right?
Sadly, no. The list is too long and too complicated for our world today. Not only that, none of the problems that biochar can fix are at the top of the list for most people. Biochar won’t stop wars, keep prices low at the gas pump, help first time home buyers, or lower their taxes.
Nonetheless, more and more people are discovering the benefits of biochar, and the industry is slowly growing, but to really take off, we need that “killer app.” I think we might have found it. It’s not a happy development, but it is a huge and growing problem - wildfires leading to urban and suburban conflagrations.
Note the last item on my list above: Biochar fixes forest fires by converting excess fuel loads to water-holding soil.
Over the last 20 years as the biochar industry has grown, we have also seen a large increase in both wildfires and urban conflagration events. Here is a short list of some notable urban conflagrations:
2017 Tubbs Fire, Santa Rosa, CA. Destroyed over 3,000 homes in the city and killed 24 people.
2018 Camp Fire, Paradise, CA. Destroyed more than 18,000 structures and killed 84 people.
2020 Labor Day Fires, multiple fires that reached Oregon towns. Destroyed more than 5,000 structures and killed 11 people.
2021 Marshall Fire, CO. Destroyed 1,100 structures in the Boulder suburbs with 2 fatalities.
2023 Lahaina, HI. Destroyed 2,200 structures and killed 102 people.
2025 Pacific Palisades and Eaton Fires, CA. Destroyed more than 16,000 structures and killed 31 people.
2026 Spokane, WA. Destroyed more than 800 structures with one fatality.
All of these fires entered urban areas and destroyed whole neighborhoods. Insured property loss from the 2025 Palisades and Eaton fires alone reached $40 billion with total economic losses estimated at up to $275 billion.
There is much debate about causes and solutions, but most analysts agree we need to do much more to remove flammable fuels from the WUI (wildland urban interface) and harden homes and landscaping to resist fire. In the wildlands, there are even-aged tree plantations that need thinning for forest health, and we are thinning along roads to create fire breaks that allow fire fighters to establish control points. All this work is necessary and ongoing, but with a few simple changes, it could be far more effective in actually mitigating the problem.
There are two important steps we can take to leverage our fuels work into even better protection and they both have to do with water:
Turn the woody debris into biochar and use it in urban landscapes to hold moisture in lawns and landscaping, swales and rain gardens.
Make biochar in the woods and leave it there to hold moisture in forest soils and vegetation and use it to repair erosion gullies so water spreads and sinks, increasing soil moisture over larger areas.
These two biochar applications also correspond to two biochar production methods, based on the location of the woody debris that needs to be treated. This is a crucial point, because the biggest challenges in biochar production have to do with gathering, processing and transporting woody debris. Every time you have to touch a log, a branch or a pile of brush to gather it up and move it, it costs money.
Biomass is usually widely and thinly distributed across the landscape. The exceptions are sawmills, greenwaste drop off sites at landfills or compost yards, and agriculture processing plants, where waste biomass accumulates and can be economically used at a dedicated biorefinery to make biochar, electricity, and other products. This is the biochar that enters markets and can be purchased by landowners to improve soil health and moisture holding capacity.
Out in the woods, the flammable brush and small trees we need to remove for fire safety are often piled and burned for disposal. In the WUI, this material is either chipped or hauled to a landfill. In the best case scenario, it will go to a local biorefinery and become biochar.
There is another way of handling this widely distributed material, when it is too costly to gather up and take to a biochar facility. We call this Biochar On Site, and we have organized a network and community of practice to develop this biochar pathway. We wrote a report on the technologies for the US Forest Service and we meet once a month online to network and exchange information about opportunities. You can join us at BiocharOnSite.org.
The simplest and cheapest method to make biochar on site is a clean burn pile that is put out with water at the end to save the char.
Flame Cap Kilns like the Ring of Fire can be used out in the woods or in the WUI in place of chipping or landfilling woody debris.
This Tigercat Carbonizer can be used in remote locations where large amounts of biomass are piled up.
This is the kind of biorefinery facility that we need in every community that has a source of waste wood. It produces both biochar and energy.
For all of us who get excited about the amazing biochar carbon wrench and all it can do for the environment and the economy, the wildfire problem is an opportunity. It’s an elegant solution because we can use the very material that causes the problem - flammable fuel — and turn it into improved soil moisture, helping to solve the problem.
Most of the market-based biochar products for applications like water filtration, agricultural soil amendments, and building materials require a large, robust, fully functional biochar industry that produces a consistent product. Sadly, that does not yet exist everywhere it is needed. There are a number of excellent biochar producers in the USA, but biochar is not yet available in every region at a good price. As a high volume, low bulk density material, biochar is expensive to ship. We need biochar producers in every state and region to overcome this problem.
And yes, this is a chicken and the egg problem. Our biochar chickens won’t produce unless there is a market for the eggs, but without trying the eggs, people cannot discover that they are worth spending money on.
While we wait for the biochar industry to scale up, we can start scaling OUT across the landscape now using the Biochar On Site methods. The biochar we make in burn piles, flame cap kilns and air curtain burners is high quality, clean biochar, but it can be inconsistent in size and other characteristics. That’s fine to use on the site where you made it, but it’s not easy to sell it as a product. As we get more biochar into soils, from the wildlands to the WUI, we will also be demonstrating the water-holding benefits of biochar to other potential markets that can be served by a mature biochar industry. We can show everyone some eggs while we wait for the chickens to arrive and start producing.
We might not all realize it yet, but there is nothing more important to us than water. Whatever the cause, there is no doubt that many regions are becoming warmer and drier. Keeping moisture in the soil is crucial, and biochar can help, so let’s do it!
Please, if you want to learn more about practical biochar tips and tricks for growing your own food, or you are interested in stewardship biochar for restoring natural ecosystems and biodiversity, check out some of my links below:
The Biochar Handbook at Amazon.com
The Biochar Handbook at Bookshop.org
Purchase Kelpie’s Practical Biochar Course
Order your Ring of Fire Biochar Kiln®: RingofFire.earth
Check out my YouTube channel: www.youtube.com/@KelpieWilson
Biochar On Site network for practitioners of stewardship biochar
You can also find me on Linked In and Instagram
The Biochar Prepper is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
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