“All Power Labs makes machines that use an ancient process called gasification to turn out not only carbon-neutral energy, but also a carbon-rich charcoal by-product that just happens to be a fertilizer so efficient that Tom Price, the company’s director of strategic initiatives, calls it “plant crack”.

Gasification, in which dense biomass smoldering — but not combusting — in a low-oxygen environment is converted to hydrogen gas, is nothing new. Price said that ancient cultures used it to enrich their soils, and during World War II, a million vehicles utilized the technology. But after the war, it more or less vanished from the planet, for reasons unknown.

All Power Labs has taken gasification and combined it with two of the
Bay Area’s most valuable commodities — a rich maker culture and
cutting-edge programming skills — to produce what are called
PowerPallets. Feed a bunch of walnut shells or wood chips into these
$27,000 machines and you get fully clean energy at less than 10 cents a
kilowatt hour, a fraction of what other green power sources can cost.

Because there’s no combustion in All Power Labs’ gasification process, the carbon isn’t released into the air.
Rather, it is pulled from the biomass and converted into charcoal. Thanks to gasification and the fact that that charcoal can be put back into the ground, the process of releasing carbon is reversed, Price argued.”

Read more: Carbon-negative energy source a reality, and cheap too. Via Slashdot.