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Biochar can be useful to overcome several environmental challenges in different sectors of energy, industry, and agriculture. However, there are currently only a limited number of studies with the employment of biochar for various applications and their environmental impacts. This study develops an LCA framework to evaluate the climate impacts of biochar production and its applications in soil enhancement and as a substitute for coal-based fuels in steel industries and then compares it with conventional biomass usage for energy production for Sweden, Italy, and Poland. Various pyrolysis operating temperatures are also considered to determine the optimal conditions for each location. The results show that biomass pyrolysis with biochar usage in the agricultural sector has the least environmental impact with the most significant potential in Poland followed by Italy. lower temperatures (around 350 °C) are more favorable for Sweden in terms of CO2 emissions, due to the country's renewable energy-based electrical system. Low to moderate temperatures (350–500 °C) are found to be optimal for pyrolysis temperature in Italy, while higher temperatures (around 650 °C) yield the highest GHG reduction for both biochar applications in Poland. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Public acceptability appears an essential condition for the success of low-carbon transition policies. In this paper, we investigate the role of self-interest on citizens' preferences for the distribution of costs and environmental benefits of energy efficiency policies. Using a discrete choice experiment on nationally representative household samples of Sweden, Italy, and the United Kingdom, we first investigate preferences for national burden-sharing rules and for the distribution of environmental benefits accruing primarily in rural and/or urban areas. We examine the role of self-interest and self-serving bias in a correlational manner by looking at the effects of income and location of residency on preferences for these policy attributes. Moreover, we investigate the effect of self-serving bias on preferences for burden-sharing rules in a causal manner by experimentally priming randomly assigned groups of participants to feel either rich or poor. Our results suggest that the accountability rule is the most popular and the equal-amount rule the least popular burden-sharing rule. Further, policies with environmental benefits accruing primarily in rural areas are least preferred. We find some evidence for self-interest, especially through our correlational approach. Finally, across country samples, our results reveal heterogeneity in preferences for policy attributes and in the prevalence of self-interest. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]