From Mr Mads Asprem.

Sir, In her article about charcoal, in pulverised form fashionably called biochar, Fiona Harvey asks: "What to use to make the char?" ("Can you dig it?", FT Magazine February 28.) Quite wrongly she says that "tearing down forests to turn into charcoal would be insane". Sustainably managed plantation forest is the most efficient and probably the only large-scale way to create biomass for biochar production. It also establishes carbon sinks, and in developing countries it is the carbon activity with the strongest social and economic benefits. It will, however, directly benefit local farmers, not pressure groups from the developed world.

The UK Biochar Research Centre estimates that one gigaton per year of carbon can be stored in biochar by 2050. But, if dedicated biomass stocks are used, this can be increased between five and nine times. This dedicated biomass can only be wood.

Mads Asprem,
Managing Director,
Green Resources,
Oslo, Norway