"The Government" Has Never Been a Change Leader

Industrial & technology trends in the private sector now combining economy + environment.

Corporate and financial leaders behind new earth-friendly movement focused on biochar and shifting to circularity on a big scale.

In Des Moines, Iowa, ARTi is a developer of pyrolysis systems, key to the production of biochar, with capacity to pull massive amounts of carbon from the atmosphere.

Industrial change has never been driven by political or bureaucratic leaders, except maybe in China. The AI trend of silicon-based intelligence is countered by a carbon-based movement led by some impressive global corporate and financial interests. The industry is biomass and the end product is biochar. The technology behind it is pyrolysis. The goal is to reduce atmospheric carbon, and the science is solid, backed by such groups as Iowa State University's Bioeconomy Institute. We know the science is solid because it's being banked on in the form of carbon credits, which can earn producers of biochar something like $150 per ton. They can also earn from sales of biochar, which may be the most impactful soil amendment in history. Impactful, not just for its value to plants, but for restoring carbon to soil, pulling it out of the atmosphere, and sticking it back into the ground, from which it emerged in the form of petroleum.

Much of the corporate world is aware that "the environment" can't be squeezed any tighter. The exploitive model of the last 400 years has to be modified, or else. So this biochar seems kind of miraculous in a way, as if the natural world is presenting us with a gift. Maybe it works, maybe it's too late, but when charting a new path forward for our species, it's both rational and intuitive to follow the science. That is what's exciting about this new biomass industry.

The mainstream 'biomass' industry today is not as positive, because it's about burning up waste fuels to heat steam for electrical generating turbines, especially wood. Giant wood stoves, basically. By contrast, this new 'biomass' is about producing biochar using pyrolysis, a high tech version of how charcoal has been made for thousands of years. It burns the organic waste materials with very low oxygen. Instead of producing smoke and ash, the end products are oils, synthetic gases and biochar. Each of these has value, biochar being the key focus. The gas can actually be used to help heat the pyrolysis unit, so it's somewhat of a circular model in itself.

Pyrolysis has had some bad press as well, especially in Georgia, related to plastics and not so much about biochar. Where we're at now is to transform these alternatives into something we can believe in, especially investors, because they're the ones, not "the gummint" to make it happen. The final equation has to show a profit on saving the climate, that's the foundation of "the 4th industrial revolution.

NEXT: 1. Some examples of where it's working. 2. Who's behind the economics, and 3. What are the challenges.

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