Biochar standards
Leading the development of material quality and laboratory testing standards to increase trust in biochar.
Without standardization, rapidly advancing ecosystems like biochar struggle to scale. Adoption slows, trust is lacking, and demonstration projects get repeated over and over again rather than moving into broader commercial deployment.
Standards reduce that friction. They allow engineers, municipalities, farmers, corporations, and other users to source and deploy biochar with confidence. Although several current frameworks exist — including testing methods and application standards — they do not yet support broad adoption of biochar, and they were not specifically designed for the American biochar market.
As an industry convener and group of technical experts, we support standards work by leading on the details but also by bringing producers, engineers, researchers, and policymakers together around shared priorities. Our goal is to guide standards through formal standards development organizations with open participation, like American National Standards Institute and ASTM International, that are most valuable to the North American ecosystem in practice.
Understanding and using biochar standards
Read the free S668 standard (Nov. 2025) for laboratory methods for measuring and testing biochar.
Support your biochar standards knowledge with our Understanding Biochar Laboratory Reports fact sheet.
Resource library coming soon
Have questions? Contact us and we can help point you in the right direction.
Biochar standards are essential market infrastructure. They allow users to compare products, streamline procurement, reduce risk, and consistently integrate biochar into sectors like construction and agriculture. Defined quality guidelines also support fair competition by providing transparent, measurable data to allow comparability.
What standards work encompasses
Biochar standards give the industry a shared language with clear quality guidance, definitions, and testing methods that make materials measurable and comparable. They turn biochar into a material that users can trust and confidently put to work.
Developing standards is painstaking work. They only have value when they are developed with a broad group of stakeholders using transparent processes. That’s why at ABI, we develop all of our standards through formal standards development organizations like the American National Standards Institute (ANSI), ASTM International, and the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers (ASABE). Each of these organizations follow an open and transparent process to guarantee that the standards we develop facilitate the trust needed to scale the biochar industry.
Our work across the biochar industry
Access a range of resources to learn about biochar, adopt biochar effectively, and advance applied biochar research. Connect with industry experts via our service provider directory and gain access to industry events.
