Cool Planet: The Biochar Big Leagues and 'Shoddy Science'

In the world of biochar business, itโ€™s been mostly โ€œtalkโ€ and little โ€œwalk.โ€ Few biochar businesses have scaled up their operations in a serious way, despite big claims โ€” with little scientific proof to back them up โ€” about the substanceโ€™s climate change mitigation potential.

Cool Planet Energy System is seemingly the exception to the rule, with a December 2013 Forbes article hailing the company as one apparently โ€œtoo good to be true.โ€ The heaviest hitter making a bet on biochar, Cool Planet called its marketing strategy โ€œthe ultimate contrarian solutionโ€ at the 2013 North American Biochar Symposium attended by DeSmog in Amherst, Massachusetts.

โ€œCool Planet is addressing global accumulation of carbon dioxide emissions by transforming the fuel production process. Our carbon negative fuel cycle permanently removes CO2 from the atmosphere by sequestering biochar,โ€ Cool Planet formerly boasted on its website. โ€œThis comprehensive process results in up to a 150% carbon footprint reduction.โ€

The video below details the companyโ€™s biochar approach and Cool Planet explains its โ€carbon negative fuel cycleโ€ in another video.

โ€œ[I]nstead of just leavingโ€ฆagricultural waste to just rot on the ground, what we do is collect the leftover biomass and run it through the biomass fractionator which extracts useful hydrocarbon fuels such as gasoline and residual carbon called biochar,โ€ Cool Planet details. โ€œBiochar is highly porous and has beneficial water- and nutrient-maintaining capabilities.โ€

Straightforward enough. The claims, thereafter though, get steeper and some have taken them to task for making grandiose claims without backing them up with verifiable, peer-reviewed science. 

โ€œWe take the biochar and process it to become a soil enhancer, which we place back in the ground,โ€ Cool Planet continues (emphases mine). โ€œThis sequesters the carbon in the ground for hundreds of years, which makes the associated fuel carbon negative while building soil for growing more crops. The result is a new fuel production process called the carbon negative fuel cycle that permanently removes atmospheric CO2 while growing more crops and food and producing a clean, affordable and carbon negative fuel.โ€

Breaking Ground

In February 2014, Cool Planet broke ground on its first commercial facility in Alexandria, Louisiana, biblically dubbing it โ€œProject Genesis.โ€ Joining Cool Planet for the ground-breaking: then-Louisiana Republican Governor Bobby Jindal.

โ€œCool Planetโ€™s bio-refineries will provide tomorrowโ€™s technology today to harness our renewable energy resources and supply advanced fuels to meet our nationโ€™s growing energy demands,โ€ Jindal stated in a press release.

With an investor list including the likes of General Electric, BP, ConocoPhillips, Exelon, and Google Ventures, one thingโ€™s for certain: thereโ€™s big money โ€” $100 million, to be precise โ€” riding on Cool Planetโ€™s success going forward.

โ€œThey are working on global problems, such as producing renewable fuels and removing of carbon dioxide from our atmosphere,โ€ Bill Maris, a Google Ventures managing partner told The Verge of the deal. โ€œItโ€™s the kind of investment that we love at Google Ventures, because the vision is so big.โ€

However, major questions remain.

Where is the scientific grounding for the grand claims made by the companyโ€™s principals? And is โ€œsuccessโ€ measured in terms of Cool Planetโ€™s quarterly profits or in terms of the companyโ€™s ability to use its product to mitigate climate change?

Despite the fact that, business-wise, the company is proceeding with haste, its science lags far behind, according to a 2014 investigative article published by The Verge.

โ€œCool Terraโ€

At the 2013 North American Biochar Symposium, Cool Planet announced the launch of its biochar soil amendment product โ€œCool Terra,โ€ a wordplay on the ancient Amazonian โ€œterra preta,โ€ a fertile soil enriched with a charcoal-like substance and produced by indigenous peoples of the Amazon more than 800 years ago.

Then, in December 2013, Cool Planet became the first ever biochar manufacturer certified by the International Biochar Initiative (IBI). 

โ€œEvery trial weโ€™ve done, weโ€™ve seen 60-percent yield improvement,โ€ Rick Wilson, Cool Planetโ€™s then-vice president of strategic relationships and former long-time employee of BP, said during his presentation at the Symposium.

Wilsonโ€™s not the only one at the company making grandiose claims.

In a February 2012 Solve For X presentationMike Cheiky, Cool Planetโ€™s founder and chief technology officer who has since left the company, said that if given three percent of the worldโ€™s landmass to produce its product and bring it to market, Cool Planet could reduce carbon emissions by 100 parts per million in the next 40 years.


Photo Credit: YouTube Screenshot

The โ€œCarbon Negative Planโ€ is realized, according to Cool Planet, from its โ€œCarbon Negative Fuel Cycle.โ€


Cool Planetโ€™s โ€œCarbon Negative Fuel Cycle.โ€ Image Credit: U.S. Patent and Trademark Office

Cool Planet has received 13 different patents from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, with two pertaining to the companyโ€™s production of โ€œnegative carbon fuelโ€ and another three centering around the production of renewable fuels using its technology.

โ€œShoddy Scienceโ€

For all the apparent promise of Cool Planetโ€™s โ€œCool Terra,โ€ thereโ€™s also an elephant in the room: the companyโ€™s scientific claims have never been peer-reviewed or even shown to the public, for that matter.

Asked for those results by DeSmog, Michael Rocke, Cool Planetโ€™s then-vice president of business development, said they are a trade secret and canโ€™t be shared. He did not respond to repeated requests for comment sent by DeSmog about the biochar offsets protocol submitted by International Biochar Initiative (IBIshot down by the American Carbon Registry in 2015.

The 2014 investigative article covering Cool Planetโ€™s rise to prominence by The Verge โ€” which included interviews with over a dozen company insiders who spoke confidentially โ€” concluded that the company, led by Mike Cheiky, uses โ€œshoddy scienceโ€ and shady business practices to lure in investment capital. 

The piece also reveals Cheiky has a history of attracting initial investment money from venture capitalists and then after a few years, moving on to his next project.

โ€œIโ€™m the lab guy, Iโ€™m on to the next thing,โ€ he told The Verge. โ€œIโ€™ve made lots of money, couple of yachts, lots of houses, and high-performance sports cars, but I really love working in the laboratory. Thatโ€™s my mission. To be the first person to do something.โ€

Indeed, Cheiky has moved โ€œon to the next thingโ€ and now co-runs a start-up company called V-Grid Energy Systems alongside Rocke. V-Grid makes grandiose claims about its products in the same way Cool Planet describes its โ€œcarbon negativeโ€ potential. 

Cool Planetโ€™s โ€œHeavy Hittersโ€

Cool Planet has also signed on some โ€œheavy hittersโ€ to join its upper-level management team, which, in addition to the investment capital itโ€™s received from big corporations, gives the company a veneer of legitimacy to the public and to investors.

Case in point: Archie W. Dunham, former president, CEO, and chairman of the board of directors of ConocoPhillips, sits on the board. Dunham sits on the board for Chesapeake Energy, one of the top producers of gas obtained via hydraulic fracturing (โ€œfrackingโ€) in the U.S.

Archie Dunham
Archie W. Dunham, Photo Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

Bill Halter, former Lt. Governor of Arkansas and Democratic Party primary candidate for the U.S. Senate in 2010, is also a member of Cool Planetโ€™s board of directors.

โ€œDonโ€™t Forget Your Engineeringโ€

Big investors and big names are one thing. But the juryโ€™s still out on the veracity of Cool Planetโ€™s scientific claims.

One professor interviewed by The Verge (whom I also met with), William Banholzer โ€” a senior advisor at the Wisconsin Energy Institute and research professor of chemical and biological engineering at University of Wisconsin-Madison โ€” actually uses Cool Planet in presentations he gives as a case study of using scientifically โ€œoutrageous claims that defy common senseโ€ while marketing its product.

โ€œ[People] see GE and these other big people put their money in,โ€ Banholzer told The Verge. โ€œBecause these companies put their money in, [people] immediately jump to the idea, โ€˜Oh well they must know what theyโ€™re doing, it means there is something pretty good there.โ€™ So I use Cool Planet as an example of โ€˜Donโ€™t forget your engineering.โ€™โ€

In the case of the companies giving Cool Planet start-up capital, Banholzer suspects itโ€™s non-scientists whoโ€™ve eaten Cool Planetโ€™s sales pitch for lunch.

โ€œThey have a lot of investment guys, who are like bankers, and they donโ€™t use their engineering talent to do due diligence.โ€

Regardless of the state of its science, Cool Planet received U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDABioPreferred certification for its Cool Terra soil amendment product in February 2016.