More than 50 million tonnes a year of commercially-accessible, sustainable biomass residues are currently being burned, landfilled, or under-utilised in Australia.
Converting this to biochar to help boost crop and livestock productivity is a key aim of the peak body for biochar in Australia, the Australian New Zealand Biochar Industry Group (ANZBIG).
After a series of State-based launches, last week in Perth ANZBIG held the Western Australian launch of a major industry roadmap outlining how to successfully seize this opportunity by 2030.
Past ANZBIG chairman Nigel Murphy said the Australian biochar industry had world-leading biochar technologies, research and significant residual biomass resources.
He said the industry was ready for a scale-up, which would require a concerted effort from stakeholders, research, government and capital investment bodies.
"Biochar has been identified as a key source of non-fossil carbon with the potential for many important applications, including as an enhancement to land and agriculture, and as an important additive for industrial applications," Mr Murphy said.
Biochar production is one of the carbon dioxide (CO2) removal methods, also known as negative-emissions technologies (NETs), recognised by the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) as an effective method for climate change mitigation.
Mr Murphy said successful implementation of the Biochar Roadmap by 2030 had the potential to reduce Australia's net carbon emissions by 10-15 per cent, provide up to 20,000 permanent jobs (especially in regional and rural areas), improve soil health and agricultural productivity and return degraded lands to a higher value.
He said there were big opportunities for farmers to convert waste residues into biochar for extra revenue and potentially provide a way to mitigate their own carbon liability.
NSW Primary Industries senior principal research scientist Lukas Van Zwieten told last week's Perth ANZBIG Roadmap forum that more than 70pc of Australian soils had a constraint of some kind and this was costing the grains industry alone about $1.3 billion each year in lost production.
He said waterlogging or compaction at depth adversely impacted crop root penetration and the soil water 'bucket' and reduced grain yields.
"Acidity is associated with high soil aluminium levels that are toxic to plants, and non-wetting sands result in staggered plant development and inefficient use of soil water and nutrients," Dr Van Zwieten said.
He said increasing soil carbon had been shown to help address these constraints, but said sandy soils common to WA did not store carbon well.
"There are a lot of opportunities to use biochar to boost soil carbon levels in WA," Dr Van Zwieten said.
He said a Soil Co-operative Research Centre project with highly constrained soils had used 500 kilograms per hectare of biochar as a fertiliser and three years later there were still higher yielding crops in the treated area than the control crop area.
"NSW and South Australian trials using deep-placed biochar pellets have also shown significant crop yield improvements," he said.
Dr Van Zwieten said biochar could be used as a carrier for rhyzobia, nutrients or other soil microbes.
He said the stable carbon content of biochar would help to stabilise soil carbon and there was potential for it to increase soil resistance to water stress.
