European Biochar Market Report 2021/2022

European Biochar Market Report 2021/2022

The European Biochar Industry recently conducted an industry-wide study to obtain granular insights into the current and short-term European biochar production capacity. The study looked at Biochar production plants installed in Europe between 2012 and 2021 and installations that will be commissioned in 2022. An aggregation of the results at a country/region level follows. 

The study only includes European Biochar Certification (EBC) quality grade biochar that is produced in:

• • dedicated biochar production plants;
  • charcoal production plants and plants for production of carbon for the metallurgic industry with dedicated production for carbon-preserving applications (counting only the carbon-preserving part).

Findings

2021 saw the installation of 25 biochar production plants.

The cumulative number of installed biochar production plants since 2012 has grown to over 100 installations, with around 80 of them with a production capacity of ⪴ 200t/a.

Biochar production capacity shows robust growth, with consistently high and even accelerating growth rates:

The growth rate in 2021 was 71%

The growth rate for 2022 is projected to be > 85%

Average growth rates

• • 3y CAGR was 50% (2018 2021),
  • 3y CAGR expected to grow to 67%
    (2019 2022)

 Estimated 2022 production capacity

The following two assumptions were used to calculate the projected biochar production for 2022:

• • 70% uptime in commissioning year and 6 months operations calculates actual production to 35%;
  • 80% uptime for plants commissioned in previous years.

The production capacity at the end of 2022 is expected to be 65.000 t/a and will come from three dominating regions/countries.

D-A-CH and Scandinavia together will represent about 75% of the 2022 production capacity.

Within Scandinavia, Sweden represents the most relevant country.