We focus on tropical developing countries for 3 main reasons.

1. Agriculture is usually one of the predominant economic sectors and generates massive amounts of crop residues, for which few valorisation schemes exist. This gives us access to abundant and cheap feedstock for biochar production while ensuring no land-use change.
2. Biochar's agricultural effects are most effective on tropical crops (Jeffery et al., 2017), thus improving farmers' income. Additionally, farming costs can be reduced since biochar reduces the need for synthetic fertilisers; in some cases, biochar can even allow for a transition to fully organic farming.
3. Producing electricity from the excess gases of our pyrolysis process provides a stable and sustainable source of power in rural and often poorly electrified areas.

Therefore, our geographic approach maximises biochar's agricultural and social impact, while optimising our economics.

While pyrolysis is a well-known technology, long mastered industrially, there are many areas of potential improvement to optimise biochar production along NetZero's model.

We have launched an ambitious R&D programme to optimise the underlying technologies, to simplify installation and operations, and to ensure we meet the highest standards of safety, quality, and reliability.

Following several technological iterations, we are launching in 2025 a fully optimised model that can be franchised to agri players accross the tropics. Only then will we be able to truly scale biochar and unlock its global potential for climate and people.

NetZero aims at forging long-lasting partnerships with companies serious about sustainability, both within the agri value chain (e.g., cooperatives) and outside (e.g., large corporations with net-zero targets). Through these partnerships, we seek to maximise the climate and social impact of our model, and facilitate our geographical expansion.

We also partner with research institutes to further study biochar's agronomic effects in a wide range of scenarios. As of 2024, we have partnerships with over 15 leading universities and research centers specializing in the study of biochar.