How these projects work
Soil carbon is a part of the organic matter in soil. It comes from the breakdown of plants, microorganisms and animal waste material.
A soil carbon project involves managing your land to encourage increases in soil carbon. Increases occur by building carbon stores in the soil. Sampling your soil measures changes in soil carbon and provides you information about soil nutrition and health. Increases in measured soil carbon earns you carbon credits.
Project activities
Improve your soil carbon levels by introducing one or more new eligible land management activities, such as:
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applying nutrients, lime, or gypsum
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installing new irrigation with water sourced from privately-funded farm water efficiency savings
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seeding a pasture, and
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changing stocking rates, or the duration or intensity of grazing.
Increases in your soil carbon can be dependent on existing carbon levels, soil type, management history, rainfall and prevailing seasonal weather (for example, if are you in a drought).
Eligibility requirements
To be eligible you must:
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Identify eligible land on your property — land was pasture, cropping (which may include horticulture such as fruits or vegetables) or bare fallow for the last ten years.
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Establish legal right (the right to run your project and claim carbon credits) — for example, holding a lease or other land title, or having a signed agreement with other landholders to run a project on their land.
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Obtain regulatory approvals and consent from everyone with an eligible interest in the project land. Consent holders will vary. They may include banks, state governments (if the land is leased) or relevant native title bodies corporate.
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Make sure your project is new — you will need to adopt a new land management activity after you register your soil carbon project.
Running and reporting on your project
As part of registering a project, you will need to prepare a land management strategy (explaining what activities you will undertake) and calculate your expected carbon credits.
There are operating, sampling, reporting, audit, notification, monitoring and record-keeping obligations in running a soil carbon project. You will need to report on your project at least once every five years. You receive carbon credits each time you report increases in soil carbon levels over a period of 25 years.
Your project must store carbon for 25 or 100 years to deliver a long-term benefit to the atmosphere (known as ‘permanence’).
Relevant legislation and resources