CANDELARIA
BERGERO
The greenhouse gas emissions caused by our energy system threaten a sustainable future. To overcome this threat, we need to transition towards cleaner energy forms. We have to change nearly everything around us: from the way we heat our homes, to the way we power our planes and produce our steel. My research focuses on how we can achieve this transition and on the environmental justice implications for people like you and me.
My passion is to establish a symbiotic relationship with our planet and with one another.
Biochar as a carbon dioxide removal strategy in integrated long-run mitigation scenarios2024
Environmental Research Letters
Candelaria Bergero, Marshall Wise, Patrick Lamers, Yong Wang & Maridee Weber
DOI: 10.1088/1748-9326/ad52ab
Limiting global warming to under 2 °C would require stringent mitigation and likely additional carbon dioxide removal (CDR) to compensate for otherwise unabated emissions. Because of its technology readiness, relatively low cost, and potential co-benefits, the application of biochar to soils could be an effective CDR strategy. We use the Global Change Analysis Model, a global multisector model, to analyze biochar deployment in the context of energy system uses of biomass with CDR under different carbon price trajectories. We find that biochar can create an annual sink of up to 2.8 GtCO2 per year, reducing global mean temperature increases by an additional 0.5%–1.8% across scenarios by 2100 for a given carbon price path. In our scenarios, biochar's deployment is dependent on potential crop yield gains and application rates, and the competition for resources with other CDR measures. We find that biochar can serve as a competitive CDR strategy, especially at lower carbon prices when bioenergy with carbon capture and storage is not yet economical.