The Carbon Contract - for a carbon balanced urban development.

The growing demand for biochar in Sweden has led to the emergence of a new industry.

By pyrolysis (charring) of organic residues biochar is generated which, when added to soil, remains for hundreds to thousands of years.

In 2018, the UN´s climate panel IPCC classified biochar as a carbon sink and an important technology for meeting the climate challenge.In the construction sector there is a rapidly growing demand for ways to compensate the emissions of greenhouse gases that construction projects entail.

Biochar is sold both as a soil conditioner and as a stable carbon sink and today the demand is higher than the production in Sweden. A lot of biochar is imported.

But we know that there are great opportunities to accelerate production; not least by converting thousands of Sweden´s existing boilers to biochar production.With the project, we want to create a web-based platform, www.kolkontraktet.se, which will function as a matchmaking site between local/regional biochar producers and those who want to compensate for their emissions.

The parties enter a Coal Contract which includes the advance purchase of carbon sinks which is realized within 1-5-years.

An advance payment creates incentives for more people to start producing and for smaller players it creates increased security.

The customers who have made a pre-purchase of a carbon sink are in turn continuously updated on how much of their sink that has been realized and can use a map function to follow where the biochar has ended up, in a field or urban plant bed.A prerequisite for our idea is that it is possible to certify the biochar and verify the process - with tracking from production to use.

Our platform at www.kolkontraktet.se will collaborate with Carbonfuture - a world-leading trading system for biochar carbon sinks, developed in Germany.

The project is technically feasible as Carbonfuture has developed a QR code - with registration of each batch/delivery of biochar where coordinates are included.