Mark P. McHenry

School of Engineering and Information Technology, Murdoch University, Perth, Western Australia, Australia

email: mpmchenry@gmail. com

OUTLINE

Introduction 447

Theoretical Income Streams 448

Renewable Energy and Fuel Generation 448

Carbon Sequestration of Biochars and Carbon Markets 449

Agricultural Benefits 450

Economic Analysis 451

Can Biochar Be a Cost-effective Fertilizer Substitute? 451 Can Biochar Be a Cost-Effective Approach to Increase Grain Crop Primary Productivity? 452

Can Biochars Increase Livestock Growth Rates, or Provide a New Market for Semiarid Forestry? 453

A Comparison of Biochar Carbon Value for Different Potential Income Streams 454

Conclusion 454

Disclaimers 455

References 455

INTRODUCTION

Rural biomass energy and carbon options seem to offer increased financial resilience to agricultural enter­prises relative to fluctuating seasonal growing condi­tions and uncertain market prices of inputs, products, and exchange rates. The projected increases in farming costs from any future inclusion of the agricultural sector from carbon pricing may be offset by additional net in­come from such rural biomass-based sequestration and renewable energy activities. Cellulose, hemicelluloses, and lignin are the main components of wood and crop residues of known potential for bioenergy and stable carbon forms, and the management of which requires detailed agronomic, technical, and market information. Thus, there is a synergistic match between growing
food and growing biomass for energy and carbon in the same rural enterprise.

Modern concepts of biochar-agricultural systems and their respective projected financial viabilities have been outlined in the existing literature (Lehmann and Joseph,

2009) . These systems commonly incorporate complex semi-industrial operations with rural and forestry biomass as well as small-scale low-technology concepts with farm waste and domestic heating. To narrow research specificity, this work focused on the West Midlands of the Northern Agricultural Region of Western Australia (WA), and uses Australian dollars. (At the time of writing the Australian and US currencies were roughly parity.) To date, this region is one of the few regions of Australia that has exhibited economically encouraging agricultural responses from biochar addition, and has an established

Bioenergy Research: Advances and Applications

http://dx. doi. org/10.1016/B978-0-444-59561-4.00026-7

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practice of profitable grazing leguminous fodder shrubs, which is a potentially large and sustainable biomass supply.