Australian Academy Of Science Study Supports "Mostly A Sham" Appraisal Of Carbon Credit Systems
Criticisms raised by a whistleblower who called Australia’s carbon credits “largely a sham” have been supported in a new report commissioned by the Albanese government. The study by the Australian Academy of Science, requested by the independent Chubb review, examined strengths and limitations of four methods used to generate Australian carbon credit units by reducing or avoiding emissions.
Each of the methods – human-induced regeneration (HIR), avoided deforestation, landfill gas, and carbon capture and storage – had flaws that potentially undermined investor and community confidence in credits, the academy’s report found. One issue was whether the projects claiming the carbon cuts would have gone ahead without the granting of credits. The methods’ complexity and lack of transparency were other challenges. For instance, farmers in inland New South Wales and Queensland were being paid for limiting land-clearing for cattle grazing when the biggest factor in vegetation growth was rain.
“Variable patterns in rainfall are the dominant drivers of fluctuations in woody biomass in these systems, with the proportion attributable to human activity small and variable,” the study found in its analysis of the single largest Australian carbon credit unit source at 28%. “This triggers the ‘evidence based’ offset integrity standard, as it is not clear how changes in carbon sequestration in HIR projects can be convincingly differentiated between human and climatic changes.”
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With HIR projects, the regulator had “no processes for separating out the impacts of rainfall from the impacts of grazing management, meaning proponents will inevitably be credited for rainfall-induced changes in tree and shrub cover”, he said. “In simple terms, proponents will get credits for growing trees that would have grown anyway,” Macintosh said.
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https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/nov/22/flaws-in-australias-carbon-credits-schemes-undermine-transparency-new-report-finds