Request for Proposals: Seeking Contractor to Identify Biochar Innovators and Develop/Implement Earned Media Strategy around Biochar Profiles
The National Center for Appropriate Technology (NCAT) is seeking a contractor to identify innovators in the production or use of biochar to sequester carbon and build healthy, resilient soils. This contract offers the opportunity to work in support of climate change solutions and building productive, sustainable, and resilient farming systems.
Project Goals:
- Develop a portfolio of successful innovators and businesses involved in the production and/or utilization of biochar and, where appropriate biofuel byproducts, to tell the story of biochar as a multi-pronged solution to land-use challenges, soil degradation, carbon drawdown, and economic development.
- Develop an earned media strategy to cultivate, pitch, and land local, regional, and national news pieces on the opportunities biochar innovators are harnessing to address climate change,improve farm profitability and create economic opportunity across rural America.
- Highlight the opportunities, obstacles, strategies, and policies for scaling up the biochar sectoracross a broad geography of the United States.
- Build support for the bipartisan Biochar Research Network Act and other policies to support development of a biochar and biofuel industry.
Deliverables:
- Cultivate a group of leading biochar innovators in targeted states for the purpose of sharingtheir stories across earned media platforms.
- Prepare succinct, well-written, and compelling profiles of leading biochar innovators as pitches, guest columns, news releases, or other earned media methods as part of a larger earned media strategy. The stories should describe their biochar strategies, experiences, and results.
- Develop and implement a detailed earned media strategy to share the stories of biocharinnovators in targeted local, regional, and national news outlets. Targeted states may includeWashington, Arkansas, Iowa, Wisconsin, Montana, Maine, Georgia, North Dakota, Maryland,and Oregon.
- Set up interviews with identified innovators to gain an understanding of their biochar strategiesand experiences, and vet those innovators for possible earned media pieces.
Location: Remote
Budget: Up to $35,000
Period of Performance: March 2023-2025
Application Procedures – Send a cover letter, resume, and three writing samples to Emilie Ritter, Director of Communications and Development, National Center for Appropriate Technology – emilier@ncat.org
The cover letter should address the following questions:
- What are the key strengths you would bring to this role?
- Describe your experience in developing an earned media strategy
- Describe a successful earned media campaign you’ve managed
- Describe your experience and understanding of agriculture, forestry, energy, and climate solutions as it relates to biochar.
Please note that the Contractor will need to provide documentation of business insurance that provides adequate coverage for the work performed, maintaining it in full force at all times during the performance of the work under this contract.
Deadline: February 13 or open until filled.
About Biochar
Biochar offers a win-win solution for climate, agriculture and forestry. But its potential will only be realized with a national strategy for coordinated biochar research, supportive public policy and private investment to develop a biochar and biofuel industry.
Biochar is critical because soil is critical. Global soils hold three times the carbon as the atmosphere. So, even modest increases in organic soil carbon can make a significant impact on atmospheric carbon dioxide level. Biochar holds unique promise for building soil carbon because it persists in soil for hundreds to thousands of years. Research also suggests that appropriately designed biochar can reduce nitrous oxide emissions from soil and slow breakdown of native soil carbon, thereby sequestering additional carbon in soil.
Biochar also offers real bottom-line benefits to farmers, ranchers and foresters. It can improve soil health, increase crop yields and enhance re-establishment of forests on marginal and degraded soils. It can improve nutrient cycling and availability. And it can build soils that enable farms and ecosystems to endure extreme weather by better capturing heavy downpours and storing more water to sustain crops and forests through hot and dry spells.
However, research results have been inconsistent, reflecting variations in biochar, soil, climate and application practices. There is a critical need for a coordinated large-scale research program that tests the range of biochar types across locations with diverse conditions. Biochar has great potential. But to achieve that potential, we must better understand which types of biochar achieve the desired results in varying soils and circumstances.
To develop that understanding, bipartisan members of Congress joined together to introduce the Biochar Research Network Act. (HR 8596 in the US House and S 4895 in the Senate). The Act charts a course for federal funded research to fill the critical knowledge gaps on biochar. It will be considered for inclusion in federal farm bill being developed in this session of Congress.
There must also be concerted action to develop an industry to produce biochar and its biofuel coproduct. The pyrolysis process pioneered at Iowa State University produces biochar along with cellulosic sugars and biocrude oil that can be processed into low to negative carbon fuels. The fuels can lower emissions for difficult to decarbonize sectors and help pay for production of biochar. The biochar builds soil health and productivity to support the production of biomass for fuel along with food and fiber, without converting rangeland and forests to farmland.
But an industry must be built to realize these benefits, at a pace sufficient to meet the challenge of climate change. The profiles of biochar innovators will help draw the attention of the news media, the public and policy makers to the benefits of biochar. They will build support for development of a biochar and low carbon biofuel industry that contributes to solving climate change and building healthy, productive and resilient soils and farms.