Most people asking for a biochar feasibility study have never seen one. So they do not know what to ask for, cannot tell a serious piece of work from a well-designed brochure, and end up comparing quotes on price alone.
This is what belongs in one, section by section, and what each section is really for.
Why it exists at all
A biochar project asks you to spend serious money — a reactor, a drying shed, handling equipment, laboratory work, registry fees, validation — almost all of it before a single credit is sold.
The feasibility study is the cheap thing you do first to find out whether the expensive thing is worth doing. That is its entire purpose. Every section below exists to kill one specific way that projects fail.
1. Feedstock assessment
What it answers: is there enough of the right biomass, every year, close enough, at a price that works?
This is the heart of it, and it is where most of the effort goes. A real feedstock section contains:
- Every source within an economic collection radius, listed individually — not a district-level average.
- Measured volumes, from weighed samples off known areas, not estimates from a report.
- Moisture content, tested, because half of what you collect may be water.
- Month-by-month availability, since a plant is sized by the leanest month, not the best one.
- Ownership, current price, and delivered cost including transport.
- Sustainability screening — is harvesting this material actually a good idea?
2. The additionality verdict
What it answers: would this carbon removal have happened anyway?
This is the section that inexperienced advisors skip and that registries exist to enforce. For every feedstock stream, the study must record what happens to that material today.
| Current use of the biomass | Effect on the project |
|---|---|
| Openly burned in the field | Strong case — you prevent an emission and create a removal |
| Left to rot, no agronomic purpose | Strong, if genuinely surplus |
| Returned to soil as mulch | Weaker — you must account for the carbon and nutrients removed |
| Burned as boiler fuel | Weak — the user buys coal instead, and that emission is yours |
| Already sold to a mill or industrial buyer | Weak — it is not waste if someone pays for it |
A project can be technically flawless and commercially attractive and still fail here. Finding that out in week three of a study is cheap. Finding it out from a validator two years later is not.
3. Technology fit
What it answers: what kind of equipment suits this material, at this scale, in this place?
Not a brand recommendation — a specification direction. Feedstock decides the machine: bulky low-density material, high-silica straw and dense woody chips all behave differently, and moisture decides whether you need drying integrated into the design.
The section should cover reactor type and scale, drying and storage, handling and sizing, emissions control, power and land requirements, and indicative capital cost for the whole plant rather than the reactor in isolation. Our guide to choosing pyrolysis technology goes deeper on the options.
4. Carbon yield and permanence
What it answers: how many credits, realistically?
The chain is simple and each step loses you something:
- Fresh feedstock, minus water, gives dry biomass.
- Dry biomass times char yield — commonly 20 to 30% for woody material — gives biochar tonnage.
- Biochar tonnage times its carbon content and permanence factor, minus deductions for transport, drying energy and non-permanent carbon, gives net CO2 removal.
Expect a good study to show all three steps with its assumptions visible, and to give a range rather than a single number. A study that quotes one confident figure for credit volume is telling you something about the author, not the project.
Permanence turns on the H:Corg ratio, which is set by how hot and how long you pyrolyse — a machine decision made early. Why that ratio decides permanence is worth reading alongside this section.
5. Registry pathway
What it answers: which methodology, and what does it demand of you?
The choice between Verra VM0044, Puro.earth and Isometric is not paperwork. Each sets what you must measure, how often you must sample, what your char must test at, and what records you must keep — all of which affect plant design.
This is why the registry decision belongs in the feasibility study and not after it. Retrofitting monitoring onto a finished plant is far more expensive than designing it in.
6. The techno-economic model
What it answers: does this make money, and how sensitive is that answer?
A usable model includes capital costs across the whole plant, operating costs including feedstock, labour, power and maintenance, both revenue lines — biochar as a product and credits as carbon — and the costs that are easy to forget: registry fees, validation, annual verification, laboratory testing and monitoring.
Two things separate a real model from a spreadsheet:
Conservative pricing. Credit prices move. A model built on the top of the range is a wish. See what biochar carbon credits are worth for realistic ranges.
Sensitivities. The study should show what happens when feedstock costs more, when yield comes in lower, when credit prices fall, and when verification slips a year. If the project only works in the best case, you have learned something valuable.
7. Risk register
What it answers: what could go wrong, and how badly?
Feedstock competition from other buyers. Seasonality and monsoon downtime. Technology underperformance against its specification. Registry or methodology changes. Price movements. Permits and local approvals. Community and land access.
Each entry should carry a likelihood, an impact and a mitigation. A risk register that lists only risks you can easily mitigate is not complete.
8. The go or no-go
What it answers: should you proceed?
A recommendation, in writing, with the assumptions it rests on, the conditions attached to a yes, and the specific things that would change the answer.
This is the section that proves the rest was honest. A study that cannot conclude "do not proceed" is not a study. Which leads to the uncomfortable but important point about who you hire: if your advisor is paid a share of future carbon revenue, a "no" costs them everything, and the incentive to find a yes is built into the engagement before anyone has looked at your biomass. A fixed, milestone-based fee keeps the answer independent.
What you need to supply
You do not need technical data — producing that is the job. You do need:
- Your biomass sources, rough volumes and harvest months.
- Who owns that material and what happens to it now.
- Site location, available land, power availability, road access.
- Any quotations or equipment plans you already have.
- Your target scale and your timeline.
- Any land, lease or supply agreements already signed.
The honest answers matter more than the flattering ones. A study built on optimistic numbers you supplied will produce an optimistic conclusion, and the plant will still be wrong.
How to tell a real study from a brochure
| Real study | Sales document |
|---|---|
| Volumes measured and stated dry | District averages, fresh weight |
| Additionality assessed per stream | Additionality mentioned once, generically |
| Ranges with assumptions shown | One confident number |
| Conservative credit pricing plus sensitivities | Top-of-market pricing |
| Registry chosen with reasons | "Verra or Puro" with no comparison |
| Whole-plant costs | Reactor cost only |
| Can conclude no-go | Always concludes yes |
Where it leads
A completed study is not just a decision for you. It is the document a lender, an equipment supplier, an offtake buyer and eventually a validator will each want to see, and its quality sets how seriously each of them takes you. Done well, it becomes the spine of the project design that follows — which is why the project development work runs so much faster when the feasibility work was done properly.
Done badly, it becomes an expensive way to confirm what you already hoped.
If you are weighing a biochar project and want an independent view before committing capital, see how we run feasibility and feedstock assessment, or request a biochar project feasibility assessment and we will scope it against your own biomass, site and timeline.
Figures and ranges in this article are estimates as of September 2026 and vary by feedstock, technology, location and scale. Carbon credit revenue is never guaranteed, and every project should be assessed on its own measured data.