Australian environmental market investor GreenCollar has launched a fund looking to raise A$100mn ($64.9mn) to develop Australian Carbon Credit Unit (ACCU) projects under the Environmental Plantings (EP) method.
The funds should be committed by the end of the first quarter of 2026, and the first ACCU projects could be registered just after closing the raise, the company told Argus today.
Investors will be entitled to distribution of ACCUs generated by the fund, opting for receiving profits either in carbon units or cash, GreenCollar said.
The EP fund is the latest in a series of investments announced over the past year. UK-based investment firm Cibus Capital is looking to raise A$70mn-100mn by the end of 2025 and as much as A$300mn by the end of 2026, which would finance projects that could generate up to an estimated 11.25mn ACCUs over 30 years.
Australian state-owned green investment fund Clean Energy Finance (CEFC) recently launched a A$250mn platform also dedicated to EP ACCU projects, which secured a long-term offtake with mining company Rio Tinto for part of the credits issued.
These announcements follow a move in 2024 by the Silva Carbon Origination Fund, which is backed by mining companies Rio Tinto and BHP, and airline Qantas.
Under the EP carbon crediting methodology, which was updated in 2024, ACCUs are issued to projects based on carbon sequestered in trees as they grow. Carbon developers need to establish a permanent forest by planting a mix of native species.
The resulting carbon credits are regarded as having among the highest integrity across the scheme, commanding a significant premium to ACCUs coming from methods such as human-induced regeneration (HIR), avoided deforestation (AD) and landfill gas.
EP ACCUs trade sporadically and in low volumes but have been fetching prices around mid-A$50s/t CO2e in recent months, compared with A$38.15-38.65/t CO2e across generic ACCUs.
"While the EP method is not yet at the scale of other methods, EP is anticipated to be a core pillar of ACCU project growth in coming years," GreenCollar said.
The company claims to be the largest nature-based ACCU developer, with a market share of over 40pc. Canada's Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan owns a majority stake in the company.
There are two existing EP projects registered under GreenCollar's subsidiary Terra Carbon, according to the Clean Energy Regulator (CER) — Buddha in the Bush Ceduna Sanctuary and Brinkley Station Revegetation Project. Both projects were registered in South Australia in 2024, with 25-year permanence period, according to CER register data.
