This new climate change solution could be tested on Whatcom, Skagit farms


Kaitlyn Bernauer for the Yakima Herald-Republic/AP

Ysabelle Kempe
Mon, January 31, 2022

A new tool to fight climate change is coming to rural Whatcom and Skagit counties. But the planet isn’t the only one that stands to benefit — farmers could see healthier soil and more productive fields.

The Whatcom-based organization Kulshan Carbon Trust is launching a pilot program in the coming months to experiment with a type of charcoal called biochar. When this substance is spread on the land, it has been shown to suck planet-warming greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere while boosting crop yield and tree growth.

The Trust, started in 2021 by three Bellingham residents, confirmed Tuesday, Jan. 25, that the pilot project has secured grant funding of $60,000 over two years from the Regen Foundation. This is the nonprofit arm of the Regen Network, a company that works to give economic value to ecosystem services.

The Trust is hoping that Whatcom and Skagit farmers can eventually get paid to generate “carbon credits” by applying biochar to their fields, much as they apply fertilizer.

“Carbon credits” are generated when landowners change their land management practices to store more greenhouse gases, which are the primary driver of human-caused climate change. These carbon credits are typically “verified” by a third-party organization. Individuals, companies or governments can purchase these verified credits to “offset” their own climate pollution.

The Trust wants to create a local “carbon marketplace,” in which people and organizations can purchase carbon credits generated within driving distance.

“There is something very disconnected about companies, municipalities and individuals buying carbon credits for projects around the world — somewhere you’ve never been and don’t know of,” said Jessa Clark, a Trust co-founder and sustainability expert who graduated from Stanford University. “It’s hard to verify ‘Is this a good thing?’ There are lots of examples of carbon offsets gone wrong — not happening, exploiting communities.”

The other co-founders are Steve Hollenhorst, former dean of Western Washington University’s College of the Environment, and Howard Sharfstein, a former corporate sustainability leader and retired environmental attorney. The organization has applied for nonprofit status but has yet to be approved.

How it works

Here’s the Trust’s plan: When a logging company harvests a forest for timber, it is left with “slash piles” of brush and woody debris. These slash piles are often burned out in the open, polluting the air, or the pile is left to decompose, slowly releasing the potent greenhouse gas methane into the atmosphere.

The Trust wants those piles of woody debris to instead be burned in a low-oxygen environment to create charcoal rather than ash. This “biochar” will then be added to compost piles to “charge up with nutrients and microbes” that are good for soil health, Clark explained. The end result will be a rich, dark soil-like substance.

The biochar is then transported to local farms to be spread on the earth. (It can also be used in forests, but the Trust is focusing primarily on farmland for the pilot program.)

“Biochar has been shown to be stable in soils for at least a thousand years,” Clark said. “It’s a permanent form of carbon sequestration with many co-benefits.”

Carbon sequestration refers to the long-term storage of carbon dioxide. With the planet’s average temperature projected to increase until at least 2050 even if humans rapidly cut greenhouse gas emissions, carbon sequestration is increasingly being recognized by scientists and leaders as crucial in dealing with human-caused climate change.

Biochar has garnered recognition as a climate solution over the last decade, but it’s not a new technology: Indigenous communities living near the Amazon River in South America are believed to have used it as a soil supplement thousands of years ago, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Service.

The common agriculture practice of tilling, or turning over soil before planting new crops, reduces carbon in the soil, and biochar’s high carbon content can help restore that loss. This improves the soil’s ability to hold water, making it more productive, according to the Utah State University Forestry Extension.

That means that biochar could help with Whatcom agriculture’s desperate need for more water — studies have shown it can reduce the amount of water needed for irrigation. It could also reduce toxic runoff polluting local waters, since charcoal absorbs excess nutrients, Clark said.

“We see huge potential,” Clark said. “The challenge with it is that it is all very, very context-based. We don’t know how well it will work until we try it.”

The primary barrier to widespread biochar use is economics — a lot of biochar production is “boutique,” Clark explained. Plants are specifically grown to turn into biochar, which raises the cost of the final product. The Trust’s model is different.

“Because we are working to almost exclusively use waste streams, we are hoping that will reduce biochar costs a lot,” Clark said.

Looking for partners

The Trust is still conducting outreach and determining which logging companies, composting companies and farmers are interested in participating. The organization knows its plan can come across as wonky and complex, and Clark said most of the unenthusiastic responses she’s gotten so far are from community members who say they don’t understand the process.

But if it is successful, the project could have wide-ranging impacts. Not only could it be scaled up locally, but it can be used as a model for communities across the nation, said Trust Co-founder Sharfstein.

The Trust has plans to launch another project later this year testing more natural solutions to climate change.

“Biochar is a great initial opportunity,” Sharfstein said. “But what we want to do is, in sequence, prove different natural climate solutions.”

The Trust urges any community members with comments or questions to reach out using the contact form at kulshancarbontrust.org.