- 2024
- March
- 27
- Study: Aussie Outback Carbon Offset Tree Planting “… not reducing emissions as promised …”
Tree in the Northern Territories, Australia (outback). Matthijs van den Berg, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Study: Aussie Outback Carbon Offset Tree Planting “… not reducing emissions as promised …”
Essay by Eric Worrall
Another carbon offset success story?
Australia’s carbon credits system a failure on global scale, study finds
Researchers find carbon offsets approach, which is supposed to regenerate scrubby outback forests, was not reducing emissions as promised
Adam Morton Climate and environment editor Wed 27 Mar 2024 09.21 AEDT
Australia’s main carbon offsets method is a failure on a global scale and doing little if anything to help address the climate crisis, according to a major new study.
Research by 11 academics found the most popular technique used to create offsets in Australia, known as “human-induced regeneration” and pledged to regenerate scrubby outback forests, had mostly not improved tree cover as promised between about 2015 and 2022.
The peer-reviewed study, published in the nature journal Communications Earth & Environment, analysed 182 projects in arid and semi-desert areas and found forest cover had either barely grown or gone backwards in nearly 80%.
The academics said it meant these projects were therefore not reducing emissions as promised, and polluting companies that bought offsets created through these projects were often not reducing their impact on the climate as they claimed.
…
The climate change minister, Chris Bowen told the ABC’s RN Breakfast on Wednesday that a review of the carbon credit scheme that he commissioned from Ian Chubb, a former Australian chief scientist, had backed the integrity of the system.
The abstract of the study;
Published: 26 March 2024
Australian human-induced native forest regeneration carbon offset projects have limited impact on changes in woody vegetation cover and carbon removals
Andrew Macintosh, Don Butler, Pablo Larraondo, Megan C. Evans, Dean Ansell, Marie Waschka, Rod Fensham, David Eldridge, David Lindenmayer, Philip Gibbons & Paul Summerfield
Communications Earth & Environment volume 5, Article number: 149 (2024) Cite this article
Abstract
Carbon offsets are a widely used climate policy instrument that can reduce mitigation costs and generate important environmental and social co-benefits. However, they can increase emissions if they lack integrity. We analysed the performance of one of the world’s largest nature-based offset types: human-induced regeneration projects under Australia’s carbon offset scheme. The projects are supposed to involve the human-induced regeneration of permanent even-aged native forests through changes in land management. We analysed 182 projects and found limited evidence of regeneration in credited areas. Changes in woody vegetation cover within the areas that have been credited also largely mirror changes in adjacent comparison areas, outside the projects, suggesting the observable changes are predominantly attributable to factors other than the project activities. The results add to the growing literature highlighting the practical limitations of offsets and the potential for offset schemes to credit abatement that is non-existent, non-additional and potentially impermanent.Read more: https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-024-01313-x
Obviously the scientists are wrong. Australian Federal Climate and Energy Minister Chris Bowen, the guy who thinks you can store electricity like water, and who regularly claims that investing in renewables will bring down energy prices, assures us of the integrity of carbon offset schemes which rely on trees planted in marginal Aussie outback scrubland thriving and absorbing lots of carbon.
Note: The picture at the top of the article is not as far as I know a carbon offset vegetation regeneration site, just a photogenic example of how dry and harsh the Aussie outback can be.
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