EUBCE 2026 - Monika ORLOWSKI - A Framework for Modeling the Economic Viability of and Incentives Design for Biochar Carbon Removal with Energy Co-Production

A Framework for Modeling the Economic Viability of and Incentives Design for Biochar Carbon Removal with Energy Co-Production

Short Introductive summary

Biochar Carbon Removal (BCR) via biomass pyrolysis is a negative emission technology already available on the market today. In addition to negative emissions, it creates a gas that can be processed into different energy carriers and materials. The multiplicity of outputs poses challenges to the development of viable business cases and design of incentive policies that support the different aims of generating negative emissions, (flexible) energy provision, and further product use. Previous techno-economic research has examined BCR with a focus on its profitability, negative emission potential, or role in national energy systems. However, there is no framework or model that reflects the operator’s behavior under inner-annual economic conditions, including incentive structures, the endogenous determination of decisions on capacity investment, product portfolios, and operation, as well as with consideration of technological characteristics. In this article, we introduce the Pyrolysis Modelling Framework (pyromof), which has been developed to address this research gap, and demonstrate it with a use case on the costs of different storage systems and their impact on power production flex

M. Orlowski, Institute for Ecological Economy Research, Berlin, GERMANY
H. Bluhm, Institute for Ecological Economy Research, Berlin, GERMANY