Google has opened applications for its 2026 Carbon Removal and Superpollutant Elimination R&D Awards, offering grants of up to $500,000 per project to advance novel climate technologies and scale carbon dioxide removal (CDR) solutions. The initiative spans 11 priority research categories alongside an open submission call targeting critical bottlenecks across carbon capture, methane abatement, and nature-based removal mechanisms. Open to global academic institutions, corporate entities, non-profits, and social enterprises, the program aims to fund rigorous empirical research, modeling, and engineering prototypes. Applications close on September 25, 2026, with financial awards set to be disbursed by December 31, 2026.

Despite growing recognition of biocharBiochar is a carbon-rich material created from biomass decomposition in low-oxygen conditions. It has important applications in environmental remediation, soil improvement, agriculture, carbon sequestration, energy storage, and sustainable materials, promoting efficiency and reducing waste in various contexts while addressing climate change challenges. More as a durable carbon dioxide removal pathway, production models remain heavily constrained by reliance on traditional woody biomassBiomass is a complex biological organic or non-organic solid product derived from living or recently living organism and available naturally. Various types of wastes such as animal manure, waste paper, sludge and many industrial wastes are also treated as biomass because like natural biomass these More feedstocks. This dependence creates regional supply bottlenecks, elevates procurement costs, and generates competition with forestry and timber industries. Furthermore, expanding biochar deployment into municipal and agricultural waste processing requires overcoming technical uncertainties around pyrolytic conversion efficiencies, contaminant behavior, and long-term carbon stability. Without dedicated research targeting non-traditional inputs, low-value waste streams remain underutilized, limiting the broader scalability and geographic adaptability of the global biochar industry.

To address these feedstockFeedstock refers to the raw organic material used to produce biochar. This can include a wide range of materials, such as wood chips, agricultural residues, and animal manure. More constraints, Google has established a dedicated funding stream offering up to $450,000 for research focused on manufacturing biochar from alternative, underused organic sources. The research call explicitly targets feedstocks including municipal solid waste (MSW)Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) is the everyday trash or garbage produced by households and businesses. It includes a variety of materials, such as food scraps, paper, plastics, and yard waste.  MSW forms a potential feedstock category for biochar production provided that it should be free More, sewage sludge, and non-woody crop residues. By directing financial capital toward these neglected input materials, the program seeks to catalyze engineering and chemical solutions that optimize thermal conversion processes, establish safety protocols for industrial residual streams, and validate the agronomic and carbon-storage integrity of the resulting biochar materials.

The allocation of targeted grant funding is expected to accelerate the diversification of biochar feedstocks beyond conventional forestry residues, enabling broader market integration into municipal waste management and agricultural systems. Successful projects will yield public datasets, open-access research, and validated operational frameworks, helping developers de-risk non-traditional BiCRS deployments. By establishing technical baseline parameters for processing municipal waste and non-woody agricultural residues, this funding call helps expand global biochar production capacity while lowering feedstock sourcing costs.