Biochar Carbon Removal: Finally Ready for Primetime? with Alan Ransil

In this Climate Chat episode, host Dan Miller interview Devonian Systems co-founder and CEO Alan Ransil about their approach to producing biochar. Biochar is produced when biomass is burned without the presence of oxygen, a process know as pyrolysis. Wood treated this way is also known as charcoal. Biochar is a very stable form of carbon and, therefore, it is a way to sequester CO2 from the atmosphere. While biochar has been produced for thousands of years, it is yet to scale up to a major climate solution. Devonian systems hopes to change that. Dr. Alan Ransil is the co-founder and CEO of Devonian Systems. He studied energy storage materials at MIT where he received his PhD in 2018, and has worked on projects for the MIT Energy Initiative, ARPA-E, and DARPA. He started Filecoin Green, a sustainability initiative for the world’s largest decentralized storage network. He is an advisor to the Global Carbon Reward project, and for the Commons.Earth event series. Follow Alan on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/alan-ransil-53573873 Devonian Systems website: https://devonian.ai Follow Devonian Systems on Bluesky: @devoniansystems.bsky.social Please Like and Subscribe! Listen to Climate Chat on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/climate-chat/id1893162516 Listen to Climate Chat on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1m0OSLWRPPcyOddErvxJ1e Dan Miller has been giving talks around the world on the need for urgent climate action for over 20 years. He is co-founder of The Roda Group, a climate-tech venture capital group, and he serves as an advisor for other climate funds and climate-focused non-profit groups. He started Climate Chat in 2021 on Clubhouse and added YouTube in 2023. Follow Dan Miller on X/Twitter: @danmiller999 Follow Dan Miller on Bluesky: @danmiller999.bsky.social and @climatechat.bsky.social Leon Simons is a climate scientist based in the Netherlands. He was a co-author with James Hansen on the 2023 "Global Warming in the Pipeline" paper that discussed the recent acceleration in global warming. Leon's work has focused recently on changes in aerosol emissions from ships and the impact of those changes on climate change. You can access Leon's research writings here: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Leon-Simons Follow Leon on X/Twitter: @LeonSimons8 and Bluesky: ‪@leonsimons.bsky.social‬ Follow Leon on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/LeonSimons/home Follow Stacey Randecker on X/Twitter: @DrivingMzStacey and Bluesky: @bikingmzstacey.bsky.social Follow Eli Rabani on X/Twitter: @radsci and Bluesky: @radsci.bsky.social You can leave a question in the YouTube Live chat. Please begin your question with "Question:" to make it easy for our mods to spot it. For more Climate Chat episodes, see our YouTube home page: https://www.youtube.com/@climatechat For recent YouTube Live Climate Chat programs: https://www.youtube.com/@climatechat/streams