French environmental services provider Suez has announced the official start-up of Carbonity, the industrial-scale biochar plant it developed together with its joint venture partners, the technology company Airex Energy and forestry products company Groupe Rémabec. Located in Port-Cartier, Quebec, the facility is starting up with a production capacity of 10,000 tonnes of biochar per year and is to triple that output by the end of 2026, Suez said last week. The project received CAD16m in funding, approximately €10m, from the government of Quebec.
Using pyrolysis technology supplied by JV partner Airex Energy, the plant is to use approximately 58,000 tonnes per year of forest residues generated by Groupe Rémabec to produce the biochar. The project is part of a larger roadmap developed by Airex Energy and Suez, which together aim to bring plants with a combined biochar production capacity of 350,000 tonnes online by 2035.
Biochar acts as a carbon sink and sequesters carbon dioxide. The resulting carbon removals can be marketed; Carbonity has already entered an agreement to sell 36,000 carbon credits to Microsoft over the first three years of the plant's operation. The biochar itself can be used as a soil amendment or used in the production of concrete, cement or asphalt, according to Suez.
The carbon credits generated by Carbonity are being certified and marketed by the German carbon asset management company First Climate.
"The official launch of the Carbonity project is an important milestone for international climate protection through technical carbon removal solutions, as it proves that biochar technology can be scaled up. We are delighted that our customers are showing such interest in Carbonity, thereby supporting the continued development of carbon removal technology," said First Climate CEO Olaf Bachert.
Suez's COO and Interim Co-CEO, Yves Rannou, said, "This negative-emission solution identified by the IPCC is effective in combating climate change and relevant to waste recovery activities. We are convinced that biochar will play a decisive role in the ecological transition of industrial companies."
