5.7 Years: A New Mantra

March 2024 | Read the full Global Biochar Industry Update

Last month, I ended the shortest month of the year with a Carbonfuture webinar, “The Future of Carbon Removal: What Lies Ahead for Carbon Markets Webinar”.

(The recording is here, slides here.)

While the line up was stellar as usual, with concise and intelligent commentary, I was left with this takeaway from Leila Toplic 's introduction: with the current carbon budget, there are six years left to stay on a 1.5°C pathway, and the only way to do that is with the combination of emissions reductions and carbon (or GHG emissions) removals. Then Leila clarified that it is actually 5.7 years, to be precise.

Anyone who subscribes to this newsletter surely knows some version of this truth. We are possibly living in the last days (or 5.7 years) on a planet only slightly affected by climate change, relative to human life at least.?

I do not mean to preach doom-and-gloom climate change angst. I mean to say: we can, if we are strategic and tireless and a little bit lucky, affect meaningful change in the very near term. This idea, 5.7 years, is a new mantra, a quantified time frame — perhaps longer, perhaps shorter — and a driver for the urgency I want to feel every day to fuel my small part of supporting this solution in biochar.

To lighten up a bit and talk about solutions more tangibly, you must be very much looking forward to not one but two biochar market research reports in March. The European Biochar Industry Consortium (EBI) is launching their third market research report — do tune in. Then IBI and the US Biochar Initiative will release the 2023 Global Biochar Market Report the next day on 21 March; an excellent week for market data on biochar, wouldn’t you say? We’ll also have a webinar the following week with USBI’s Myles Gray .

Did you know the Instituto Latinoamericano del Biochar (ILBI - Latin American Institute of Biochar) just launched? Learn more and join this dynamic organization!

And, just as we go to publish this newsletter, EBI again has published a groundbreaking white paper to follow the game-changing research on biochar permanence. IBI will host an industry-guided discussion series or events related to the findings, and as a subscriber you’re on the list to be notified!

In other news, the Thai Biochar Academy is shaping up to be an impactful event with regional knowledge plus capacity building. We’re super excited about the second annual academy, and also to launch a new IBI online education offering coming soon.

Thank you for reading and subscribing to IBI’s newsletter — please make sure to share your news, jobs, calls for research, research positions, etc, so IBI can continue to elevate and expand your work. I welcome you to reach out with questions, ideas, or feedback.

Wendy Lu Maxwell-Barton , Executive Director