Climate Friendly believes that there is scope to further expand carbon farming opportunities in Australia, helping to meet the climate challenge and generate revenue for landholders and plantation managers.
Recent amendments made to the Carbon Credits (Carbon Farming Initiative) Regulations 2011 are welcome as they go some way to doing that for the plantation sector.
The amendments bring potential benefits for plantation-based carbon farming:
- Improving certainty when registering new projects in areas above 600mm rainfall
- Expanding access to carbon farming to include avoided harvesting, which keeps trees and their carbon in the ground.
The first of the amendments reduces administrative requirements for carbon projects in areas of Australia that have higher rainfall. This helps reduce the time taken to get projects up and running and takes out some of the uncertainty associated with multiple layers of approvals.
Carbon farming will become a more accessible option for plantation companies looking to diversify their income and use carbon farming revenue to make new forestry investments commercially attractive.
The second amendment expands what type of plantation activities are eligible to register as carbon farming projects. Companies would be able to make a management decision not to harvest a plantation and they could be eligible to register a carbon project for the avoided emissions. This is a positive outcome, because it keeps trees in the ground and reduces Australia’s emissions.
If you are a plantation manager interested in exploring or expanding a plantations carbon farming project please contact us to talk to one of our plantation-based carbon farming specialists.
