SB6121 –Regulating and encouraging biochar production from agricultural and forestry biomass.
Prime Sponsor – Senator Van De Wege (D; 24th District; Olympic Peninsula) (Co-Sponsors Nobles and Randall – Ds)
Current status – Had a hearing in the Senate Committee on Environment, Energy & Technology January 19th. Replaced by a substitute and passed out of committee January 30th. Referred to Ways & Means; scheduled for a hearing there at 9:00 AM on Saturday February 3rd.
Next step would be – Action by the committee.
Legislative tracking page for the bill.
HB2483 is a companion bill in the House.

In the Senate –
The substitute removes the $1/ton cap on the fee for burning agricultural waste and substitutes language about flame cap kilns for the biochar micro and macro units in the original.

Summary –
The bill would add producing biochar using mobile units with reduced emissions relative to open burning, and consuming less than 150 green tons a month of clean cellulosic biomass, to the list of alternative forestry disposal practices DNR is currently supposed to encourage. Those materials are defined as residuals from agricultural and forest-derived biomass including green wood, forest thinnings, wood pellets and various kinds of waste; urban wood including tree trimmings, stumps, and related forest-derived biomass; corn stover and other crops used specifically for the production of biofuels; bagasse and other crop residues; and wood collected from fire clearance, trees and clean wood found in disaster debris, and clean biomass from land clearing. (Materials couldn’t contain contaminants at concentrations not normally associated with virgin biomass.)

You’d need a burning permit from DNR to produce biochar with biomass from forestry operations, and a burning permit from Ecology to produce it from agricultural waste, including a fee of up to $1 per ton of waste.