As many of you know who have followed our almost 5-year pyrolysis system saga we received our Authority to Construct permit in February of 2025, and we installed, commissioned, and ran the system successfully for 2 months. During this period we conducted extensive emissions testing, and because of a clerical error by the testing company we had to pause production to go through a health research assessment process, which we successfully completed and we were issued our Permit to Operate on November 17th, allowing us to start up operations in December! We are super excited to start producing biochar and we should have a good supply by the early spring. This has truly been a long, strange, and challenging process and we want to thank CAL FIRE and the Napa Recycling and Compost Facility for their patience and willingness to spend the time navigating this complicated regulatory course.

We also want to announce that we assisted Napa Recycling in writing a successful grant with the Joint Institute for Wood Products Innovation to monitor and assess operational and financial data for the ARTi pyrolysis system over one year. This information will help entrepreneurs and funders determine if this system is the most appropriate technology for their particular project. Modular systems like this can be expanded and scaled to process more feedstock and produce more biochar.

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Kelpie Wilson of Wilson Biochar and the Biochar-on-Site webinar series has produced a simple flyer that can help new practitioners improve their burn pile skills while also producing biochar. Check it out here:

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Sonoma Ecology Center is a partner on a CAL FIRE-funded Green Schoolyards grant project constructing green infrastructure features at Stoneman Elementary School in Pittsburg (East Bay Area). Construction, which includes planting 37 shade trees (with biochar of course!), building an outdoor classroom/gathering area, and pulling up asphalt to build a natural play area within the existing playground area, began in early September and is due to be completed by the Christmas break. All of the stakeholders, including CAL FIRE, Valley Construction, Marina Landscaping, DC Architects, and 1 student representative from each of the 28 classes at the school along with the Principal and school and district staff, recently held a planting day event where the scholars got a chance to get their hands dirty helping to plant trees, shrubs and grasses. Here are a few photos from the event:

Pouring in the soil amendments into the tree hole.

CAL FIRE crew helps plant a tree.

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And lastly, here is a fascinating article from Mother Jones Magazine about carbon banking. The Biochar ecosystem (using community-based biomass to produce biochar) could be used to stimulate a new financial structure while sequestering massive amounts of carbon. This sounds a bit crazy at first and is very out of the box thinking, but the more I have thought about it there really could be merit to this idea. And it would surely scale the production and use of biochar as well—hopefully empowering communities and encouraging small-to-medium-scale entrepreneurs rather than simply turning biochar into a commodity. Check it out and let me know what you think. (Raymond Baltar)