Insights November 2024

• Mandatory Reporting of Greenhouse Gas Emissions starts 1 January 2025
• New Carbon Farming Method no closer to Declaration by Minister
• What Does a Tonne of CO2 Equivalent Look Like?
• Some Carbon Credit Methods Expire Soon
• Changes in the Precision of Measuring Methane Leading to Revised Priorities

Alert: Mandatory Reporting of Greenhouse Gas Emissions starts 1 January 2025

This means that if your customer has not asked for your emissions intensity number, it is not long until they will. Know your number. Plan to reduce your emissions.

Ask your Bendigo or Rural Bank relationship manager about our Ruminati pilot program for calculating your number.

The companies required to report information to ASIC are those which meet thresholds such as capital, employees and turnover. The thresholds are very high but those companies will ask their suppliers, and those suppliers will ask their suppliers. The requests will cascade down the value chain.

How long that takes may vary from farm to farm. On 1 January 2027, the direct reporting obligations will extend to companies which are medium scale. They will probably be either regional or local in operations. Their suppliers will be smaller still. It is highly likely that most farms will be asked sometime soon.

The request for your number could come sooner. The majority of businesses to which farms sell products already have voluntary commitments to reduce emissions. The emissions of suppliers are high on their priorities.

It’s prudent to be ready.

New Carbon Farming Method no closer to Declaration by Minister

The proposed Integrated Farm and Land Management (IFLM) method has been under development for considerable time. The IFLM method sets out to combine vegetation and soil carbon sequestration under one method. It will enable land managers to operate a package of carbon management activities under one integrated carbon farming method. There could be two projects over the same area, a soil one below ground, and a vegetation one above ground.

Unfortunately, the relevant federal government department announced late yesterday a delay in the declaration of this very desirable update. They hope that the new method will be declared in about one year’s time from now.

The proposed method also seeks to expand the limited number of land management strategies available under current methods thereby increasing the potential for eligible projects.

Read more in https://carbonmarketinstitute.org/app/uploads/2024/07/IFLM-Method-Explainer-1.pdf

What Does a Tonne of CO2 Equivalent Look Like?

A tonne of CO2 equivalent is the reference measure used for a host of purposes from quantifying extraction of carbon from the atmosphere to comparing the impact of various greenhouse gases.

So, what does it look like?  How big would it be? MIT scientists say you should imagine a cube about 8.25 metres on all three dimensions. In case that’s a little hard to picture, imagine a cube almost as tall, wide, and long as a power pole. That’s how much space it would take to hold a metric ton of CO2.

Read more at https://climate.mit.edu/ask-mit/how-much-ton-carbon-dioxide

Some Carbon Credit Methods Expire Soon

Several Australian Carbon Credit Unit (ACCU) Scheme methods will expire 31 March 2025.

Most of the affected methods are not immediately relevant to agricultural production.

Of interest to some agricultural producers is the ending of the Avoided clearing of native regrowth 2015 method.

The expiry of a method may impact you if you or your carbon aggregator are:

• considering registering a new project under an expiring method
• in the process of registering a project under an expiring method
• undertaking a project that has already been registered
• considering transferring your project to a new method or updated method.

No new projects can be registered under a method after it expires. To minimise the risk that your application will not be assessed in time, we recommend you complete your application by 16 December 2024.

Read more at https://cer.gov.au/schemes/australian-carbon-credit-unit-scheme

Changes in the Precision of Measuring Methane Leading to Revised Priorities

A new satellite has been launched which promises to significantly change our understanding of methane sources and action priorities.

Figure 1: the plume of methane from municipal waste. Image courtesy of Carbon Mapper Coalition.

It was built by a large public-private coalition, the Carbon Mapper Coalition. The organisation's mission is to drive greenhouse gas emission reductions by making methane and carbon dioxide data accessible to everyone and actionable.

Tanager-1 uses sensor technology build by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory to measure methane and carbon dioxide point-source emissions down to the level of individual facilities and equipment. IT will capture data on a global scale.

Methane and carbon dioxide are the greenhouse gases that contribute most to climate change. About half of methane emissions worldwide result from human activities. The primary human sources are the fossil fuel, agriculture, and waste management industries. There are also natural sources.

One of the very important consequences is that greenhouse gas reduction targets can be set much more precisely.

To reduce methane emissions effectively we need to know which industry sectors result in the greatest emissions. We can then target the sources with the combination of large emissions and ready-to-roll-out technological solutions.

In a recent report, the Climate Council commented on the significance and the underestimation of methane releases in Australia:

• Australia is the world’s 12th largest methane polluter, higher than many larger developed economies including France, Germany, the UK and Canada.
• In the year to December 2023, Australia produced nearly four million tonnes of methane, with the main sources including agriculture (52 percent) fossil fuel mining (25 percent), and household/ business waste (11 percent).
• The International Energy Agency estimates that Australian coal and gas corporations could be under-reporting methane pollution by as much as 60 percent.

Similar reports in the United States suggest that methane emissions from food waste are significantly underestimated. This is the reason that targets for reducing food waste are listed in the sustainability reports of major food retailers and processors including in Australia.

These underestimations probably reflect our increasing capacity to quantify the big point sources of emissions. We may also be overestimating the significance of methane releases from agriculture given that there are responses and reductions at farm level which are not considered.

Every significant emissions source will need to do what is possible to reduce the damaging impacts of climate change on people, infrastructure, food systems and nature. The key is to focus on the big emissions where big solutions can be economically scaled up. Solutions for the rest will follow.

See more at these sites:

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/nasa-designed-greenhouse-gas-detection-instrument-launches/

https://carbonmapper.org/

https://www.climatecouncil.org.au/resources/dangerously-overlooked-why-we-need-to-talk-about-methane/