THE enormous potential of biochar to capture and store carbon is being overlooked by the Federal Government, Opposition Leader Malcolm Turnbull says. 

Mr Turnbull yesterday toured Crucible Carbon, which is developing technology for the mass production of biochar, at Newcastle in NSW.

Biochar, a charcoal produced from biomass, has the potential to provide long-term carbon storage in soil with the offset of improving soil quality and increasing agricultural productivity.

Mr Turnbull said biochar had the potential to absorb up to 100 million tonnes of CO2 each year, close to 20 per cent of Australia's emissions.

"Globally, this could be the single biggest opportunity, new opportunity, for biosequestration of CO2 after forestry, and of course, organic soil carbon," he told reporters.

"We have an enormous opportunity here in Australia to absorb millions of tonnes of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, store it safely as carbon, and put it back into the soil and increase the productivity and the health of our own landscape.

"A win-win. A win for jobs, a win for the environment, a win for agriculture."

Mr Turnbull released the opposition's climate change policy on Saturday, including a Green Carbon Initiative to offset greenhouse gases through carbon capture and storage.

"It's an enormous opportunity that has been overlooked by the Rudd government," he said.

He said the Crucible Carbon technology had been estimated to be able to capture and store carbon for $20 a tonne or less, but companies which wanted to use biochar to offset emissions would not get a credit for it under the Rudd government's emissions trading scheme.

"Now that's crazy because, as you can see, you can take biomass, straw or forestry waste or whatever, turn it into charcoal, which is embodied carbon, restore it to the soil, so you have sequestered that, you've stored it into the ground," he said.

"That is something that should be given a credit, and it's vital that that be done, and we've called on the government to do so."

Mr Turnbull said the federal government had also neglected clean coal and the opposition was committed to building at least two industrial-scale carbon capture and storage coal-fired power plants if it gained government.

He said everyone recognised Australia was going to be relying on coal for energy for the forseeable future.

"The critical thing is to clean it up, and to do so efficiently and cost-effectively," he said.

"But again it needs strong government support and that has been lacking.

"It's important for the environment and it's above all important for the three top priorities for 2009, which are jobs, jobs, jobs."

AAP