No soil credits to pay $70,000pa methane bill?

Under a future Kyoto regime, the average Australian farmer could get a bill of $70,000 every year for methane and other emissions, but won’t be able to pay for it with the carbon they grow in their soils.

A Greenhouse Office calculator case study* for a mixed farming operation on 2200ha has the total annual emissions liability of 2687t/CO2e, which would cost $67,175 to “offset” by buying carbon credits at $25/tonne.

“While the farmer in the example earns carbon credits for 100ha of trees, there is no allowance on the calculator for carbon stored in the soil, which could be worth more than the total emissions. That tonnage of CO2e can be captured in only 732 tonnes of soil carbon†, or 0.33tonnes C/ha/year. That is not a big ask with ‘Carbon Farming’ techniques.”

In fact, a NSW Forests calculator of soil carbon sequestration reveals that our farmer could capture twice the amount of carbon needed per hectare to ‘pay’ for the methane and other emissions.

The Carbon Coalition recommended to the Garnaut Climate Change Review for Agriculture to be involved in an emissions trading scheme. But only a scheme which allowed landholders to offset their emissions with the soil carbon they can capture and store. We are willing to go into the market ‘eyes wide open’, aware of our liabilities and equally confident of our assets.

The Coalition’s submission (online at http//soilcarbongarnaut.blogspot.com) is critical of the way soil carbon science has been conducted. There are gaps in the data sets and levels of uncertainty so high they make soil carbon flux seem positively inert. And on the basis of inadequate data the myth that Australian soils are too old and degraded to sequester must carbon. The irony is that everyone who makes that statement reveals their ignorance of basic soil science. Age has nothing to do with it and what has been lost can be restored.”


[*“Sheep Greenhouse Accounting Framework” and **“Carbon Sequestration Predictor for selected land use change in inland areas of NSW Version 2.0” can be found at http://ww.greenhouse.crc.org.au/tools/calculators/]

†Convert Carbon to CO2e by multiplying by 3.67