In 2011, Iowa State University’s College of Engineering established the “Dean’s Research Initiatives” and awarded $500,000 to three interdisciplinary teams to help the groups pursue larger funding opportunities in important research areas. One of these teams is the the Initiative for a Carbon Negative Economy (ICNE).
Over the last year, ICNE continued to look for large grant opportunities in the quest to have “economic prosperity without greenhouse gas emissions.” The group is working to establish a way to use biomass pyrolysis and its byproducts—especially biochar, a carbon-rich material that results from burning feedstock—for energy, while also removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere by sequestering it into the biosphere. Read more at Iowa State’s College of Engineering.