One of the supporting arguments for the production and application of biochar is directly related to the prospect of carbon credits. Such a system has been talked about for many years, but nothing has come to fruition at the national level in the U.S. or Canada. Academics and think tanks continue to discuss the possibility of a carbon market even though such an initiative may never come into existence at the national scale. There are instances of agreements in the European Union as well as closer to home examples such as the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative in the Northeast U.S., but even these actions have not met the goals they set out to with the EU nations looking to coal and States like New Jersey withdrawing from regional agreements.
Researchers need to shift away from a world in which there might be a carbon market, and instead focus on the additional benefits of biochar. These include ecosystem services of biochar (soil fertility, water retention, bioremediation), and harnessing of bioenergy (heat, bio-oil, syn-gas) in the production stage. By framing biochar in this manner, researchers can pay more attention to markets that already exist instead of ones that have yet to become reality.