The Sonoma Biochar Initiative is dedicated to promoting biochar education and its sustainable production and use throughout California.
The Sonoma Biochar Initiative (SBI), founded in 2009, is a project of the Sonoma Ecology Center (SEC) [ www.sonomaecologycenter.org]. We are dedicated to promoting biochar education and its sustainable production and use throughout California. We collaborate with our strategic partners to educate local farmers, foresters, vineyard managers, government officials, and other stakeholders on the advantages of producing biochar to better utilize surplus materials coming out of our forests to reduce fire hazards and improve community resiliency, and then using the biochar to enhance agricultural productivity while reducing GHG emissions.
SBI views accelerated use of biochar as the key to soil restoration and recovery, as a watershed management tool, as way to help reduce mined industrial inputs like construction aggregates, sand, and coal-based activated carbon, as well as a “fast mitigation technology” being cited increasingly in international climate talks. Through grant funding SBI has established or contributed to several local and state demonstration projects for biochar production and application, and experimenting with available agricultural and urban yard waste biomass feedstocks.