Australian carbon industry member organisation Carbon Market Institute's (CMI) taskforce on the long-planned Integrated Farm and Land Management (IFLM) carbon credit method has urged the government not to further delay development of the method, following an update today.
The Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water (DCCEEW) said today that there were "considerable technical issues yet to resolve" on key components of the planned Australian Carbon Credit Unit (ACCU) method — the first in the country to combine multiple activities that store carbon in soil and vegetation in a single method. It aimed to deliver an exposure draft method to the Emission Reduction Assurance Committee (Erac), the statutory body responsible for ensuring the integrity of Australia's carbon crediting framework, "by the end of 2025".
Erac would need to assess the draft before leading a public consultation, which would then help inform its decision to recommend the method to assistant minister for climate change and energy Josh Wilson. The DCCEEW's update suggests the method would be very unlikely to be legislated this year as expected by some in the industry, with the delay to further impact the industry need to boost future ACCU issuances to address an expected shift in the supply-demand balance within a few years.
"CMI and the IFLM taskforce have been vocal about the market impact of the protracted delays in the development of the IFLM method and the current timeline is inadequate and lacks the urgency and required collaboration to finalise a technical draft," IFLM taskforce co-chairs, carbon project developer Climate Friendly co-chief executive Skye Glenday and carbon developer Australian Integrated Carbon chief executive Adam Townley, said in a statement sent to Argus. The taskforce is calling for a commitment to a legislative draft to be put before Erac in September.
Four modules proposed
The DCCEEW is proposing that the method includes four activity modules setting out different abatement activities, with project proponents able to undertake one or more modules in a project.
Modules 1 and 3 generally have a strong evidence base and well-known policy and legislative positions, as they would be based on the Native Forest from Managed Regrowth and Reforestation by Environmental or Mallee Plantings methods, respectively.
But module 4 would be based on the Soil Organic Carbon 2021 method, which is currently being reviewed by Erac. This means "more work may be required" to adequately address the review's recommendations, the DCCEEW said today.
Module 2 is the one facing "considerable technical issues yet to resolve", according to the DCCEEW. While module 1 would credit abatement for activities that promote the regeneration of native forest on land that had been comprehensively cleared and kept that way by mechanical or chemical destruction, module 2 would credit abatement for regeneration on land previously suppressed by other management actions, such as grazing pressure.
"The department recognises regeneration under this module would be a result of multiple drivers, including rainfall variability, and that a management signal from the permitted activities may not always be clear," it said. The greater uncertainty in the attribution of the project activity to carbon stock change means a higher risk of not meeting Erac's Offsets Integrity Requirements, it warned.
Taskforce calls for one regeneration activity module
The DCCEEW established two new stakeholder reference groups to help it address the more complex method components, with the first meetings held in June.
But while welcoming the creation of the groups, the CMI IFLM taskforce co-chairs said they were concerned with the ongoing delays with the method development and the potential limitation of the proposals published today. The proposed method framework continues to be based on binary "cleared/uncleared" land classifications, and could limit IFLM's national application and scalability, they said.
The suggestion that there are significant issues around the attribution of regeneration to management changes is "inaccurate and contrary to the weight of evidence", including several government reviews of the human-induced regeneration ACCU method, which expired on 30 September 2023, they noted.
"From an IFLM taskforce perspective, there should be one regeneration activity module that is nationally applicable and based on a land condition framework," they added.
