Australia will make projects that store carbon in grazing system soil eligible for funding from its Emissions Reduction Fund, Environment Minister Greg Hunt said.
The government says stopping carbon emissions from being released into the atmosphere by storing it in soil holds Australia’s biggest potential for reducing the nation’s impact on climate change.
It now plans to make storing carbon in soil in grazing systems the first soil-related project type eligible to earn carbon credits under the Carbon Farming Initiative (CFI), a 2011 scheme seeking to boost emission cuts in the agriculture and forestry sectors.
From July, CFI projects can sell their offsets to the government’s proposed Emissions Reduction Fund, which if approved by parliament will pay emitters to stop polluting.
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Soil carbon in agricultural zones is likely to provide low levels of greenhouse gas abatement
Scientists at Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation
“This initial methodology is expected to be ready in mid 2014, in time for land managers with soil carbon sequestration projects to participate in early rounds of the Emissions Reduction Fund,” Hunt told a conference in Canberra on Tuesday.
Several other soil carbon methodologies would be ready before the end of the year, Hunt said.
Hunt estimated in 2010 that soil carbon would account for 60 per cent of the carbon cuts needed for Australia to meet its target of reducing emissions to 5 per cent below-2000 levels by 2020, although he has toned down the potential since.
A number of scientists, including from the state-run Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), have criticised the government for exaggerating soil carbon’s potential.
“Soil carbon in agricultural zones is likely to provide low levels of greenhouse gas abatement,” CSIRO said recently in a submission to a Senate inquiry into the government’s climate policies.
The announcement came as new project development under the CFI has dried up amid uncertainty over Australia’s future climate policy framework.
The scheme was originally set up to supply offsets to emitters covered by the previous Labor government’s planned emissions trading scheme (ETS).
But the Abbott government, which took office in September, wants to dismantle the ETS and replace it with the Emissions Reduction Fund.
So far the Labor-Greens majority in the Senate has blocked the ETS repeal law, but the government is widely expected to succeed in July, when a new Senate sits.
