Following a successful meeting of the International Biochar Initiative (IBI) in Newcastle, England, a Canadian group with similar interests met on December 11 and 12 at the Macdonald Campus of McGill University near Montreal, Quebec to form the Canadian Biochar Initiative.

Biochar is receiving considerable global attention as a means to sequester and store carbon in soils for soil fertility enhancement and as an alternate green energy source.

Biochar has the ability to sequester atmospheric carbon dioxide because it is a form of pure carbon that can remain stable in soil for hundreds to several thousands of years and has the added benefit of simultaneously improving plant and crop productivity.

Biochar is charcoal derived from the controlled heating of plant matter, a practice used by several ancient civilizations as a soil improvement technique. Examination of carbon rich man-made Terra Preta soils of the Amazon confirms traditional claims of higher fertility of such soils.

A number of methods can be used for producing biochar. Modern biochar is a product that can be manufactured from almost any uncontaminated organic matter such as crop residues via a process called pyrolysis.

Pyrolysis can be described as the controlled heating of biomass in an environment that has no or very little oxygen, whereby the biomass is converted to charcoal. Biochar manufacturing processes are typically self sufficient in energy requirements and can produce surplus energy for use in heating or power generation.

The Canadian Biochar Initiative is being spearheaded by leading scientists, public and private industry leaders, biochar researchers and enthusiasts from across Canada.

Biochar is an exciting new development in "Green Energy" and has the potential to reduce atmospheric carbon dioxide while also enhancing soil fertility, restoring depleted soils, improving agricultural crop yields, reducing demands on fertilizers, and enhancing watersheds.

Biochar can also be used as a replacement for coal and other fossil fuels.

The Canadian Biochar Initiative (CBI) wants to give you the opportunity to stay in touch with us and the services we offer.

We will be enabling a new content management system in the near future that will enable us to always keep you up to date. At present, our web site is still under construction, however we will be making an effort to present you the entire spectrum of services offered by the CBI as soon as possible.

At this point we are providing you with general information about Biochar and some links to other information and organizations that can be found on the internet related to biochar.

The emphasis of our site is to bring an awareness that this initiative exists and we are working to make the use of biochar a 'standard' soil amendment practice in Canada.

Since this topic is likely of interest to you, we ask that you come back to our site on a periodic basis to check for updates. In the meantime feel free to contact any of our steering committee members by clicking on the 'About us' link on the left hand side.

If you are not familiar with the Canadian Biochar Initiative and this is the first time you have heard with us, we would be very pleased to hear from you!

The Canadian Biochar Initiative www.biochar.ca