Biochar is usually described in terms of its applications and its value in carbon sequestration, based on its inherent qualities. In a fire-adapted landscape, making biochar also has a role in managing fuel—a service that fire itself normally provides. We make biochar from material that would otherwise burn in a landscape fire. To restore healthy fire in a landscape that has been deprived of it, we first have to reduce the accumulated fuel. We might as well make biochar from it. That way, we accomplish more than just fuel reduction.

Releasing a forest meadow from fir encroachment and making biochar from the encroachers

Making biochar in a fire-adapted landscape is only tied to fuel reduction until the fuel is reduced. We have to reduce fuel to save the forest and ourselves. But if and when we ever catch up with the fire deficit, biochar will still be made for an abundance of practical reasons, and by then we will have discovered more of them.

Forests can be managed to supply vastly more biomass than we currently use to make biochar while restoring them to health and keeping them that way. We could increase soil carbon much faster, and given biochar's durability, it can be increased indefinitely. There is actually no limit to how much biochar we could make. Photosynthesis guarantees that.

This capacity will continue after we run out of fossil fuels. The energy density of fossil fuels will be hard to replicate, but as they become more expensive to extract, alternatives will increasingly pencil out. Biochar will gradually become more important as we learn to modify it to replace fossil energy sources. Most likely, biochar will become integral to our way of life. The future of careers in chemical engineering is assured by this, along with related industrial opportunities.