Life Cycle, Environmental Co-Benefits, and Techno-Economic Assessment of Biochar Systems for Climate Change Mitigation: An Integrated Case Study from India

India’s swift growth in energy, industry, and transportation has led to an increase in national greenhouse gas emissions by three times since 1990. This challenge is compounded by unmanaged agricultural residues and invasive species, such as Lantana camara and Prosopis juliflora, which exacerbate the deepening biomass and biodiversity crisis through the open burning of agri-biomass and the uncontrolled spread of invasive woody species, driving biodiversity loss and avoidable carbon emissions through uncontrolled decay. This study assesses the potential of utilizing and converting this “problematic biomass” into biochar as an integrated solution and scalable tool for Negative Emissions Technology (NET) in climate change mitigation, by integrating the life cycle, environmental co-benefits, and techno-economic perspectives into a single assessment framework. The comprehensive evaluation is based on thorough experimental data for these invasive feedstocks and the operational records of the commercial-scale Biochar Project, complemented by high-quality global databases from Ecoinvent and IPCC reports. The assessment synthesizes a comprehensive “cradle-to-grave” Life Cycle Assessment, adhering to ISO standards and integrated with EBC/Isometric permanence validation, within a Life Cycle Cost and Techno-Economic Assessment (LCC-TEA) framework. This further moves beyond, specifically identifying sustainable production pathways and quantifying environmental co-benefits at scale. Characterisation of feedstock reveals that the two species not only contain high amounts of carbon, due to high lignin content but also very little ash, which makes them perfect for stabilization due to the efficient conversion of biomass into stable carbon sinks through pyrolysis. Crucially, the assessment identifies logistics and the pyrolysis process energy as the primary emission hotspots in LCA, accounting for the majority of operational emissions. This framework provides a vital intervention strategy for addressing the climate crisis by bridging the gap between two key areas: ecological management and carbon markets. This provides a sustainable economic pathway, restores native biodiversity, and offers permanent and verifiable carbon removal. It also provides a practical roadmap for optimizing biochar systems, while guiding policy and investment decisions for the sustainable, large-scale deployment of invasive-biomass biochar, thereby turning an ecological liability into a climate and soil health asset.

Keywords: Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR), Negative Emissions Technologies (NETs), Biochar, Ecological Restoration, Carbon Finance, Cradle-to-Grave Analysis, Waste-to-Value.