WEB DESK: Google has announced its first venture into India’s carbon dioxide removal (CDR) sector by signing a significant carbon credits deal with Varaha, an Indian initiative specialising in biochar production.
This collaboration is among the largest of its kind in the biochar sector and reflects growing interest from tech giants in innovative climate solutions.
Varaha’s model turns agricultural waste into biochar- that is, charcoal, which removes CO2 from the atmosphere and enriches soil when applied to farmland. Under this agreement, the social media giant shall buy 100,000 tonnes of carbon credits from Varaha between now and 2030.
A scalable climate solution
“Biochar is a very promising method of carbon removal because, at a scale that currently exists on the planet, there ought to be technology benefits for soil health. It makes biochar real-near-scale across the globe,” as Randy Spock, Google’s Carbon Removal Lead, put it.
Varaha is planning to source agricultural waste from hundreds of thousands of smallholder farms all over India. The waste will be processed in reactors to eventually turn it into biochar, thus sequestering the carbon for eons. It will be a sustainable alternative to conventional fertilizers, benefiting the farmers as well.
Madhur Jain, chief executive officer of Varaha, stated that biochar holds tremendous possibility for India. “Waste from India’s farmlands could convert into biochar with the potential to sequester more than 100 million tons of CO2 every year,” he remarked. It also allows this field for much speedier growth in the immediate future.
CDR, or Carbon Dioxide Removal, is the term for technologies and methodologies that remove CO2 from the atmosphere and oceans, and increasingly is found in the toolkits countries are assembling to offset emissions through efforts to sequester the greenhouse gas. Many of these methods are premature and expensive direct air capture process is one example of biochar possesses a far. Lower cost and better prospects for Duchenne.
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