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In a warehouse somewhere near the border of Victoria and NSW sits a hulking machine built to fight the climate crisis.

When it ran, it ran perfectly, taking carbon that would have entered the atmosphere and sequestering it in the ground – essentially forever.

Today, it is silent. Decommissioned.

Biochar generation can earn high-quality carbon credits. Credit: Paul Jeffers

“It was before its time. We were too early,” says Lachlan Campbell, the man responsible for the machine. “But we couldn’t justify the expense, basically.”

The silence of the shipping-container-sized machine tells an important story in the race to decarbonise: even if the science behind a climate solution stacks up, the solution itself may not.

Campbell works as the sustainable agriculture facilitator for the North East Catchment Management Authority. His team spend much of their time stripping out the willow trees that choke many of the state’s waterways.

The waste is simply burnt – releasing the carbon the trees have locked away into the atmosphere. “It’s a terrible waste,” says Campbell.

Their pyrolysis plant seemed the perfect solution.

The machines heat material in very low-oxygen environments. Without oxygen, pyrolysis – thermochemical decomposition – is attained instead of combustion. The water and volatile compounds within the wood boil away, chemical bonds break down, and what is left is a relatively unreactive lattice of mostly carbon atoms........

© The Age