A trio of entrepreneurs are resurrecting the age-old technique of making biochar, used to trap CO2 and fertilize tropical coastal farmland.
© NetZero
NetZero green waste processing plant.
Nkongsamba stands in a green and ocher setting. About 150 km north of Douala, the city stands at the foot of the Manengouba mountains, on the borders of the Littoral region. If, in the mid-1980s, the lush land had its heyday when British director Hugh Hudson chose to set the scene for his film there Greystoke, the legend of Tarzannear the crater lakes and the Ekom Nkam waterfall, it is mainly through its economy that the city is illustrated.
Tourism, primarily with itinerant travelers attracted by the many excursions offered by Douala travel agencies to the region. But above all agriculture, which is the basis of Nkongsamba’s activity. The production and marketing of coffee also mark its identity, as well as that of the surrounding villages such as Bangwa or Kekem.
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Today, three entrepreneurs intend to breathe new life into the local economy thanks to biochar. In January 2021, NetZero was launched, a start-up co-founded by Aimé Njiakin, a Cameroonian entrepreneur, and two Frenchmen, Axel Reinaud, a former Boston Consulting Group firm, and Jean Jouzel, climatologist and former vice-president of the IPCC (the Group of intergovernmental experts on climate change). The objective: the development of biochar, contraction of “bio” and “charcoal”, charcoal in English, and which consists of a charcoal powder obtained by pyrolysis of green waste. As for its advantages, biochar makes it possible both to sequester carbon (CO2 contained in the atmosphere) and to fertilize acid soils in the tropics.
Mangroves, plantations, carbon sinks…
The trio therefore proposes to tackle two major issues, and to take advantage of them. Climate change and sustainable and resilient agriculture. Indeed, the carbon taxation initiated within the framework of the Paris Agreements – but for the time being not yet decided – and which provides in particular that the companies which pollute the planet the most will have to “offset” their emissions, offers them an opening. In other words, pay. And this to stay in the trajectory of climate agreements, halve global emissions (50 billion tonnes) of carbon by 2030, and achieve a zero carbon footprint in 2050.
“We wondered how to reduce this excess CO2 in the atmosphere? “, says Axel Reinaud, the former partner at BCG in Paris, who now embraces the cause of the climate. Imprisoning him seems an immediate concrete response. Mangroves, tree plantations, carbon sinks (see box)… The solutions exist, scattered here and there around the world. “We bet on biochar,” he says.
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And this is how the young company, whose headquarters are located in Paris, was to inaugurate on March 1 the first industrial biochar production site in Africa. If the project and the production method are new on the continent, the idea revives an ancestral technique, used more than 6,000 years ago by the Amerindians in the Amazon in order to fertilize their crops. “Thanks to the pyrolysis of agricultural raw materials, we can produce very large quantities of biochar very quickly”, explains the CEO of NetZero, who sees only advantages in this substance, although there is reluctance in terms of production cost ( especially in Europe) and its energy balance.
50% revenue from carbon credits
The initiative of these entrepreneurs with atypical profiles is supported by Yaoundé. A boost that should give NetZero every chance to quickly prosper. Cameroon, through its Minister of the Environment, Pierre Hélé, strongly supported the Franco-Cameroonian project during the last international climate conference in Glasgow in November. “The Cameroonian State intends to launch a large-scale plan in favor of biochar”, specifies Axel Reinaud.
Thus, right in the middle of a hangar open to the four winds, over some 1,000 square meters of Aimé Njiakin’s coffee processing plant in Nkongsamba, now sits an imposing green pyrolysis reactor, stamped NetZero. One imagines the pungent smell of the organic waste stored there, mixed with the breath slightly imprinted with coal carried by the breeze. The daily life of the factory must be brought to change quickly, as the 7,000 annual tons of agricultural residues (mainly coffee) planned should be transformed. At the end of the chain, the manufacture of biochar by pyrolysis makes it possible to create biofuel, which must eventually cover the needs of the plant, in addition to producing a marketable fertilizer and, finally, to monetize the carbon sequestration with the companies that have a catastrophic carbon footprint.
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The founders of NetZero estimate, a bit optimistically, a carbon price of around 100 and 300 euros per tonne of CO2 removed by 2030. As such, they foresee that in the long term, the turnover of their company 50% will be made up of income from carbon credits and 50% of biochar and fuel created. If these predictions are accurate, profitability awaits around the corner.
These other African initiatives that want to sequester carbon
Featured at the last international climate change conference (COP26) in Glasgow, Scotland, two other African projects tried to make their voices heard. That of the Great Green Wall, a white elephant, relaunched by French President Emmanuel Macron during the One Planet Summit in February 2021, with an envelope of more than 14 billion dollars decided by the actors of the summit to accelerate its realization. A flagship initiative of the African Union to combat the effects of climate change and desertification in Africa, the GGW aims to transform the lives of millions of people by creating a mosaic of green and productive ecosystems in North Africa, the Sahel and in the Horn of Africa. The other initiative that has become known to the general public and investors, the Congo Basin forest. As the planet’s largest carbon reservoir, it is vital in the fight once morest climate change. In Glasgow, Ali Bongo, Félix Tshisekedi and Denis Sassou Nguesso appealed for solidarity to carry out the actions necessary to safeguard it.
