Distributed and small-scale projects represent one of biochar's greatest opportunities to scale production, but the certification frameworks available to suppliers have not matched that potential.
Last year, Isometric issued the world’s first Core Carbon Principles (CCP) labelled biochar credits, and today we work with more than 70 leading biochar suppliers around the world—primarily those developing centralized, industrial projects. Expanding into distributed and small-scale biochar production was a deliberate next step, one that required developing a module that meets the same standard of rigor we apply to industrial projects.
Why distributed biochar?
At one end of the biochar spectrum sit large, centralised pyrolysis facilities with sophisticated process controls and dedicated monitoring infrastructure. At the other sit distributed networks of smaller kilns, operated by farmers, cooperatives, or project developers across multiple sites, but under a single project structure.
Distributed projects solve a critical practical challenge. Many of the world’s regions with the greatest availability of suitable biomass—agricultural residues, forestry byproducts—currently lack the infrastructure to transport these feedstocks to centralized facilities at cost that is economically viable. The solution is to bring biochar production to the feedstocks. In these contexts, distributed biochar isn’t just a preference; it’s often the only workable solution.
These projects can also be deployed and scaled faster than more capital-intensive biochar models—meaning that with robust measurement, reporting, and verification (MRV) they can deliver significant climate impact quickly and play a crucial role in tackling climate change.
Beyond pure practicality, distributed biochar projects offer substantial co-benefits. In some cases, these co-benefits can prove just as consequential to the environment and local communities as the carbon removal itself.
When applied to agricultural soils, biochar can improve water retention, enhance nutrient availability, and increase microbial activity, especially in degraded or low-organic-matter soils. And where the feedstock is sourced from the same land to which the biochar is returned, it creates a genuinely circular system of benefit by reducing reliance on synthetic fertilizers, increasing crop yields, and building long-term soil health in communities where agricultural production is directly tied to livelihoods.
Developing the module
Accurately certifying distributed and small-scale biochar production required solving three fundamental challenges that have historically raised questions about the quality of credits issued.
1. Data quality
Distributed projects present a monitoring challenge. Unlike centralized facilities with dedicated infrastructure, distributed projects span multiple sites, making consistent, accurate data collection difficult to achieve and for verifiers to audit robustly. Until recently, the tooling available for remote, automated data collection from distributed kiln networks had not reached the standard required to issue high-quality credits with confidence.
Isometric’s module addresses this directly, with robust requirements for digital MRV infrastructure and the systematic tracking of production data at the kiln level. Every production unit must have a registered GPS location, and pyrolysis time and temperature must be recorded for every batch of biochar—creating an auditable production history that ties each batch to the conditions under which it was produced. These requirements, combined with Isometric's Certify platform, mean that for the first time verifiers can robustly audit these types of projects and ensure they're held to the same bar for quality as industrial biochar.
2. Managing emissions
Traditional artisanal kiln designs, particularly where feedstock moisture is poorly managed, can generate significant methane emissions. With a GWP20 of 86, unaccounted-for methane can significantly reduce—or even entirely negate—the climate benefit of a project.
The module addresses this directly: kiln designs must meet specifications that establish a minimum standard for combustion efficiency and process control, and feedstock moisture content must not exceed 15% at the point of pyrolysis. Where kilns within a project show variation in their emissions profiles, the most conservative profile must be used to calculate net removals, ensuring that credit quantities reflect a lower bound rather than an average. Explicit discounts are applied for methane and black carbon, both of which carry warming potential that must be netted against the carbon removal benefit. This ensures that every credit represents a tonne of carbon dioxide removed from the atmosphere.
3. Community protections
Biochar projects built around smallholder farmers and rural communities carry both opportunity and responsibility. Guaranteed revenue-sharing arrangements can provide meaningful income stability in regions where agricultural revenues are highly variable, while also giving communities a direct stake in the long-term success of a project.
But that opportunity comes with important obligations. Isometric requires suppliers to demonstrate compliance with free, prior, and informed consent (FPIC) principles as a formal condition of validation. Only projects that generate value for local communities as well as buyers and suppliers are consistent with the responsible scaling of carbon removal.
The new standard for distributed biochar
Version 1.0 of the module was deliberately narrow in scope, built around Carboneers' biochar operation in Ghana as a first real-world deployment. The learnings from that, combined with Planboo's stress-testing of the requirements at scale, resulted in v1.1. This module robustly solves the historic challenges of certifying distributed biochar and opens the way for a wide range of projects to bring high-quality credits to market for the first time.
Trust in voluntary carbon markets has been damaged by methodologies that prioritised accessibility over accuracy. Biochar carbon removal is too important—and the co-benefits it offers to farmers, soils, and communities too significant—for that pattern to be allowed to repeat. Isometric has built a new standard for rigorous distributed biochar certification. Suppliers ready to build on that can start today.
