Nature-Positive Materials Engineering: Carbon Electrodes from Satoyama Biomass

Forest overuse is widely recognized globally, yet in Japan, the underuse of secondary forests is increasingly degrading satoyama ecosystems. At the same time, electrochemical energy technologies remain strongly dependent on mined graphite and trace or precious metals. In this Personal Account, I examine whether sustainably managed satoyama biomass can serve as a locally available carbon feedstock for electrochemical energy storage and conversion. Rather than surveying biomass utilization in general, I focus on the structure-property-performance relationships of wood-derived and satoyama-relevant carbons in batteries, supercapacitors, electrocatalysis, and bioelectrochemical systems. The available evidence indicates that this proposition is feasible, provided that its scope is clearly defined: underused satoyama biomass can already function effectively as activated carbons, hard carbons, graphitized carbons, and catalyst supports, although important bottlenecks remain in feedstock variability, volumetric performance, process standardization, and scale-up. By linking coppicing and thinning cycles with carbonization and device fabrication, this framework may reduce mining dependence, support biodiversity-oriented forest stewardship, and retain value within regional material cycles.