It is the case that torrefied wood and charcoal (maybe other forms of biochar) can directly replace coal in existing coal reactors. When transportation costs are not too large, torrefied wood can certainly compete with coal today; South Carolina comes to mind. So to some extent, using modern rather than fossil carbon is possible. The problem is that the coal reacots tend to be congregated in but a few regions while growing biomass requires extensively spread-out operations. Much of the resulting biomass is then stranded by excessive transportation costs so it makes more sense to simply bury it there.

I remind you that before the industrial revolution (indeed up until about 1960 CE), colliers burned charcoal in the woods for sale in town. I’m proposing doing much this again, with the addition of burying much of the product.

It would be like coal mining in reverse. Far better just to stop coal mining.

People need to face up to the fact that the whole foundation of our civilisation is flawed. It isn’t going to be fixed by some techno-tweek like EVs or biomass sequestration. Also it is impossible to evaluate and critique any of these techno-fixes because they can only exist in a sea of fossil fuel subsidy. The true picture will emergy only when fossil fuels are exhausted (or the EROEI is too low to make them usable), and at this point we will probably discover that the only kinds of sustainable energy are those perfected pre-industrial revolution. i.e. water mills, windmills, etc.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biomass

tereestrial biomass is 1,873.42 billion tonnes of which about 30 billion would need to be sequestered each year. Thats 1.6% per year.

In principle this is possible.

Anyway, here is a fine piece about why & how to stop burning coal:

http://solveclimate.com/solutions/no-more-dirty-coal

in the U.S.

http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/

This cycle is due to the biological capture of CO2 in the Nortthern Hemisphere Spring and its release in Autumn, plus the continual injection of fossil fuel and land use change CO2 by man.

This means that (approximately) we would need to bury about half of all the biomass across the entire planet to get the graph to level off. Forget it!

http://wakeupfreakout.org/film/tipping.html

http://terrapreta.bioenergylists.org/node/578

http://jcwinnie.biz/wordpress/?p=2815

I’m not thinking about intensively managed lands; so long as the biomass keeps growing it is (temporarily) sequestering carbon. One interesting possiblity is the ‘wall of trees’ that the countries of the Saheel want to plant to fend off the Sahara; there are almost no trees there now and they are talking tens of kilometers wide (maybe over one hundred km) by thousnads of kilometers long.

Some may require an initial application of nitrogen fertilizer, but if woody perennials (trees) are grown, the nitrogen is mostly in the needles or leaves; leave that part in the woods. PK will end up being sequestered in the char, so some additions would be required; their is no shortage of potash, so this doesn’t appear to be a problem.

rjm — My cost estimate is about $80 per tonne sequestered plus harvesting costs. This is using existing torrefication or pyrolysis units and costs should fall after some learning, mass production, etc. Harvesting costs are much higher in developed countries than in developing ones; the latter also have plenty of unused, but usable, lands.

Cyril R. — Agrichar is one company’s commericial name for their biochar product.

Koen — About two-thirds of the total comes from coal mines. Sequester in abandoned mines or in dedicated carbon landfills; there is lots of room, world-wide.

I hope you will all help to talk this up. The first part is to start lots of plantings, such as the Sahel project I mentioned above.

How about measuring the pH? You’ll find the oceans have measurably acidified (0.1 pH so far)