We need to have a difficult conversation about the trajectory of biochar scaling before the industry hits the wall of physical reality.
The largest biochar projects today are approaching 100,000 tons per year. The pitch decks and climate roadmaps are already projecting megaton-scale ambitions. Thermodynamically, scaling up centralized pyrolysis makes perfect sense for the machinery.
But logistically? Even at current scales, we are already brushing against a problem that will only intensify: the fundamental nature of the material we are producing.
The volume problem 📦
Biochar is incredibly light. With a bulk density often between 0.2 and 0.4 t/m³, producing 100,000 tons means moving roughly 250,000 to 500,000 cubic meters of material annually. That is 15,000 to 25,000 truck trips per year from a single facility.
The moment that transport radius exceeds a modest distance, diesel emissions and tire wear begin to aggressively cannibalize the Net Climate Benefit that justified the project in the first place.
The agronomic limit 🌱
We cannot simply dump unlimited carbon into soil. Responsible application rates—those that improve soil health rather than disrupting it—sit between 5 and 20 tons per hectare. Push beyond that and you risk nutrient lock-up through excessive sorption, or drastic pH shifts.
At 20 t/ha, a 100,000 ton facility requires 5,000 hectares of agricultural land annually. That is 50 km² of willing, immediate uptake within a tight logistical radius of the production facility. Every year.
In reality, adoption is patchy. This forces producers to truck material further and further out to find available sinks, expanding the transport radius until the carbon math strains.
The question worth asking ❓
If the logistics are already challenging at 100,000 tons, what happens when production scales by an order of magnitude?
When production scales up faster than distribution networks can absorb, where exactly does the biochar go?
I don’t have a neat answer. But I think we need to be asking these questions more openly before capital flows into projections that haven’t fully reckoned with the physics of moving low-density material at scale.
The thermodynamics of production and the logistics of application operate under very different rules. Ignoring one while optimizing the other is how promising technologies lose credibility.
