Soil Carbon Industry Group forms new CMI Soil Carbon Taskforce
The Soil Carbon Industry has welcomed the release of Australian Government’s First Low Emissions Technology Statement – 2020 which names soil carbon as one of five priority technologies.
The government’s economic stretch goal is for soil carbon measurement to be under $3 per hectare per year. That is a 90 per cent reduction from today’s measurement costs and would transform the economics of soil carbon projects for Australian farmers.
Matthew Warnken, Managing Director of AgriProve and Co-Chair of the Carbon Market Institute’s new Soil Carbon Taskforce said, “It heralds a new phase for soil carbon development where we focus on implementing projects at scale and delivering on the industry’s potential”.
“The key barriers to expansion are the cost of soil sampling (measuring soil carbon levels in the field) and the lack of a funding model to drive investment in new projects,” Mr Warnken said.
“The focus that the government is placing on soil carbon resolves those roadblocks and creates the opportunity for Australia to leverage its international leadership position on soils.”
The inaugural Soil Carbon Taskforce, formed under the Carbon Market Institute (CMI) umbrella, was also launched yesterday. This timely formation brings together soil carbon industry practitioners with CMI’s decade of experience in carbon market development to transform and accelerate the development of the soil carbon industry. Mr Warnken said, “It matches beautifully with the strategic focus that the government is giving soil carbon”.
The taskforce will engage with the government and Clean Energy Regulator while also working with the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) and the Clean Energy Finance Corporation as it looks to realise the opportunities to mainstream the industry.
The Director of Carbon Farmers of Australia and Soil Carbon Taskforce’s Co-chair, Louisa Kiely, said the group needed to meet immediately with the new Clean Energy Regulator team responsible for revising soil carbon methods.
“Work is already advanced at examining how to break down the barriers to farmers participating in the industry and so it will be important not to reinvent the wheel,” she said. “We need to ensure that as an industry we make ourselves available to assist in reaching the government’s ambitious targets which will benefit soil and food security while reducing emissions.”
"Achieving $3 per hectare in the soil testing area is a stretch goal. We need to ensure that any new technologies maintain the integrity of the system and can effectively detect soil carbon changes, but any technology which can augment the current method is welcomed," Ms Kiely said.
Further background: Matthew Warnken responds to the statement (audio 5’45 mins)
Media contacts: Alexandra de Blas : [email protected] M: 0414 509 404
Co-chairs of CMI’s new Soil Carbon Taskforce Matthew Warnken and Louisa Kiely
FAST FACTS ON LOW EMISSIONS STATEMENT - 2020
From Matthew Warnken, Managing Director of AgriProve – soil carbon solutions company.
· The announcement by Minister for Emissions Reduction AngusTaylor heralds a shift from the developmental phase to an implementation phase in the soil carbon industry, where we will see large numbers of projects being implemented and where we deliver on the strategic importance to agriculture and emissions drawdown.
· A major obstacle to the industry’s development is the cost of soil carbon measurement in the field. (Carbon is physically measured down to a metre on multiple sites on each farm.)
· It currently costs around $25 per hectare, the Statement has set a stretch goal of a 90% reduction or $3 per hectare.
· The key ways to reduce these costs are through streamlining the “method” under the emission Reduction Fund and to develop new technologies to reduce the time and cost associated with measuring the soil carbon levels in the paddock.
· The other factor is the need for a funding model to enable companies to invest in soil carbon projects.
· By tasking the Clean Energy Regulator with the development of new methods, the government is providing an opportunity to improve the operation of the existing method.
· It is unlocking funding mechanisms for soil carbon testing.
· More importantly the expansion of the remit of the Clean Energy Finance Corporation (CEFC) and Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) to incorporate land sector activities such as building soil carbon, will create a fantastic opportunity to develop new funding approaches to implement soil carbon on farm.
· Approaches to build soil carbon like:
o grazing management
o Planting mixed-species forages into existing pastures
o Applying compost
o Biological farming systems
· So providing funding mechanisms for the sampling and implementation is great.
Stretch Goal
· Setttng a strategic stretch goal on reducing the cost of soil sampling will unlock a lot of innovation in the area in terms of cheaper and more cost effective ways to measure soil carbon. This will reduce barriers to entry for farmers across Australia.
· There is a lot of work to do to reach the 90% reduction in the cost of soil sampling but it is possible to achieve it as the industry scales.
· The benefits of getting to scale are
o we get efficiency
o We unlock new technologies as we move from physically measuring to scanning with new scanning technologies such as near infrared spectroscopy
o Developing and adopting new platforms that incorporate satellite data as a way of tuning and calibrating changes on ground as a proxy for measuring soil organic carbon in the field.
· When you look at all of the opportunities currently on the table and the rate of change at which these technologies and approaches are improving Mr Warnken is supremely confident that we will achieve that 90% reduction in soil sampling costs.
Potential changes to the method
· The opportunity is to take the existing measurement-based method and hybridise it with the existing model-based methodology under the Emissions Reduction Fund.
· The current model-based method is extremely conservative in terms of the amount of credits that flow from it and zero projects have been registered under that approach.
· If we combined the two, we could go to a sampling regime where we measure once every ten years, and in the interval, use a model-based approach which incorporated other remote sensing data. This would enable a steady stream of carbon credits to be issued to reward farmers for changed farming practices and improved on-farm and environmental outcomes.
· There we get the best of both worlds. we still get worlds best practice soil sampling and still get the benefit of that large amount of data flowing through, but from a practical point of view rewards to farmers would start to flow from year one.
· Currently many farmers need to wait up to five years before receiving their first soil carbon credits.
Big Picture
· Minister Taylor’s announcement represents a tremendous opportunity for Australia to leverage its international leadership position on soils. We now have a clear pathway and mandate for getting the right measurement approaches, the right methods and having the right funding mechanisms for implementing soil carbon projects on farm in a way that gives us the scale to be material to Australia’s national emissions.
· At its heart building soil carbon takes carbon out of the atmosphere where it is a problem and stores it in soils where it is an asset to farmers.
Soil Carbon Taskforce
· The inaugural, Soil Carbon Taskforce, was formed under the Carbon Market Institute (CMI) umbrella, yesterday. This timely formation brings together soil carbon industry practitioners with CMI’s decade of experience in carbon market development to transform and accelerate the development of the soil carbon industry.
· It’ll provide a focal point to engage with government on exactly these kinds of announcements. Top of our agenda is to work with the Clean Energy Regulator on improvements to the existing method for soil carbon projects, reducing costs involved in participating, and co-designing new approaches with the regulator.
· The mandate of the taskforce is to then engage with ARENA and CEFC in these early stages as they start to think about what effects the change in their expanded mandate has, and how best to realise those opportunities in the real world.
Additional Background
· Matthew Warnken: AgriProve did a recent analysis of the amount of pasture-based systems in Australia and there were 30 million hectares of pasture that would be suitable for improving the levels of soil organic carbon. Now, if you were to access that amount of land, we'd be talking in the order of 130 million tonnes of abatement or 130 million carbon credits generated each year, which is more than 20% of Australia's emissions. That makes agriculture carbon neutral. So it is definitely at a scale that is material.
The reality is an emerging proposition that regenerative is to agriculture what renewables is to energy. 20 years ago in Australia there was one wind turbine creating renewable electricity. What we've got in Australia at the moment is one soil carbon project we are fortunate enough to work with that has actually created soil carbon credits.
So, what you are looking at is making this accessible to a raft of farmers at scale by removing those barriers to participation. It's from the one, it's from the 120, it's from 120 to the over 1,000, it's from the 1,000 to the 5,000 farmers that that scales up to.