Carbon auctioneer Greg Price orchestrated some spirited bidding at Australia’s first auction of carbon insets, held in Cowes last weekend. The auction raised $7000 to promote carbon farming on the island. By Bhavani Rooks
DON’T get confused about carbon dioxide (CO2) and carbon. It took me a while. They’re two different states of the same thing. The bad stuff is the CO2 in the air; the good stuff is the carbon in the soil or vegetation. Carbon farming, or regenerative agriculture, is all about putting carbon dioxide back in the soil.
Each year on average on Phillip Island 19,000 tonnes of CO2 equivalent has been stored in vegetation thanks to Landcare, Westernport Water, Nature Parks and all the groups that are planting trees across the island.
DON’T get confused about carbon dioxide (CO2) and carbon. It took me a while. They’re two different states of the same thing. The bad stuff is the CO2 in the air; the good stuff is the carbon in the soil or vegetation. Carbon farming, or regenerative agriculture, is all about putting carbon dioxide back in the soil.
Each year on average on Phillip Island 19,000 tonnes of CO2 equivalent has been stored in vegetation thanks to Landcare, Westernport Water, Nature Parks and all the groups that are planting trees across the island.
| When it comes to carbon farming, Bob and Anne Davie are leading the way on their property Bimbadeen. They’ve done a wonderful job and they’ve been an inspiration. Their journey started a long time ago with Landcare and they got on board with the Greenhouse Challenge in 2002. It’s about pasture and crop diversity. Even if you’re growing grass, it’s growing a diversity of grasses. A diversity within your crops. Bob’s grown pea crops then mulched it. I’ve stomped around on his place and it’s great. Then he allows the cattle to come back in afterwards. It’s about managing the crops, managing the pasture, managing the cattle. On Bimbadeen, several one metre soil tests are done in each paddock to measure the carbon. They’ve been storing 1200 tonne of CO2 in their soil each year on average. If you want to know more, just ask Bob and you’ll find out. Today is going to be Australia‘s first carbon insetting auction. Bimbadeen has donated 367 tonnes of CO2 equivalent, which is a 100 tonnes of carbon. The proceeds of the auction will give us our initial funds to get more Phillip Island farmers on board. What’s the difference between carbon offsetting and insetting? If you buy an air ticket, you can tick the box that says “Would you like to offset your flight?” and you feel okay but you don’t really know what happens. Often the offset is not in Australia. It may actually be sequestration or a wind farm or it may be a reduction of burning or clearing. You can’t guarantee it will be capturing CO2 and putting it somewhere. | Australian record AUSTRALIA'S first auction of carbon insets, held on Phillip Island last weekend, set an Australian record of $800 a tonne. The auction was held as part of Totally Renewable Phillip Island’s (TRPI) open day at the Cowes Cultural Centre. The island’s carbon farming pioneer, Bob Davie, donated 367 tonnes of CO2 equivalent for auction, with the proceeds to be used by TRPI to encourage more Phillip Island farmers to begin sequestering carbon as part of their farming operations. Bob says he’s still recovering from the shock of the first lot, a tonne of CO2e, fetching $800 after spirited bidding. He points out that the Australian record under the Government emissions Reduction Fund program is $100 per tonne of CO2e, which is one Australian Carbon Credit Unit. Sunday’s auction raised $7000, and Landcare and Bob are still receiving inquiries for packages from people who want to offset their carbon footprint after hearing about the auction. |
Insetting is a voluntary agreement between a farmer and a local person. It can be along a supply chain but we’re going to use a geographical location on Phillip Island. The CO2 will be stored in your local landscape.
Totally Renewable Phillip Island (TRPI) and Landcare want to increase the amount of carbon farming or regenerative agriculture on the island. Our aim is to sign up four new farms in this next year. To do that we need to facilitate the trading of the carbon credits. We want transparency about the system so locals you can see what’s going on and understand it, and we want to connect the local people and the local environment.
Our participation protocol includes audit and accounting systems of farm emissions, so the farm must account for its own emissions first before it can trade what’s left. Our audit and soil tests would initially be done annually and then every two or three years.
Farmers are already doing many of the things associated with carbon farming but we want to support them to get the initial soil tests done because they’re quite expensive.
Our ongoing aim is to sell our carbon at $25 a tonne. Of that, $20 will go directly to the carbon farmer with $5 to pay for audits and marketing.
Phillip Island Landcare will work with the farmers, TRPI will handle marketing and communication and the Energy Innovation Co-op is going to do the selling. We’re starting today with a carbon auction but after that it will be an online brokering service.
Say I’m going on holiday to Bali and I’m feeling a little bit guilty about the carbon emissions of my flight. I can go online and purchase some carbon credits to inset my flight.
As a local household or business, you would choose to purchase some carbon credits and the farmer would guarantee to hold that in their soil for you for a year.
For the farmer, there are on-farm benefits with carbon sequestration. It captures more water so it allows your farm to become more drought and flood resilient. You’ll get better farm resilience, better crops and therefore better farm pasture.
Purchasers of carbon insets are going to learn a lot more about the local farmers and what they produce. You’ll value the local landscape more because you’ll be involved in it, you’ll feel that connection to your community. You can drive past, you can go and visit. And that money will stay within our own community.
Purchasers at today’s auction will get a certificate from Bimbadeen, a voluntary contract to say they’ll hold that carbon for you for two years, an insetting sticker and a Google ID of the paddock and a map. You will feel so good you will feel like you’re walking on sunshine. So when you’re having a low day, you can pull up a map of where your carbon is stored, and feel good again.
This is an edited transcript of Bhavani Rooks’ introduction to Australia’s first auction of carbon insets, held as part of Totally Renewable Phillip Island’s open day last Sunday.
Totally Renewable Phillip Island (TRPI) and Landcare want to increase the amount of carbon farming or regenerative agriculture on the island. Our aim is to sign up four new farms in this next year. To do that we need to facilitate the trading of the carbon credits. We want transparency about the system so locals you can see what’s going on and understand it, and we want to connect the local people and the local environment.
Our participation protocol includes audit and accounting systems of farm emissions, so the farm must account for its own emissions first before it can trade what’s left. Our audit and soil tests would initially be done annually and then every two or three years.
Farmers are already doing many of the things associated with carbon farming but we want to support them to get the initial soil tests done because they’re quite expensive.
Our ongoing aim is to sell our carbon at $25 a tonne. Of that, $20 will go directly to the carbon farmer with $5 to pay for audits and marketing.
Phillip Island Landcare will work with the farmers, TRPI will handle marketing and communication and the Energy Innovation Co-op is going to do the selling. We’re starting today with a carbon auction but after that it will be an online brokering service.
Say I’m going on holiday to Bali and I’m feeling a little bit guilty about the carbon emissions of my flight. I can go online and purchase some carbon credits to inset my flight.
As a local household or business, you would choose to purchase some carbon credits and the farmer would guarantee to hold that in their soil for you for a year.
For the farmer, there are on-farm benefits with carbon sequestration. It captures more water so it allows your farm to become more drought and flood resilient. You’ll get better farm resilience, better crops and therefore better farm pasture.
Purchasers of carbon insets are going to learn a lot more about the local farmers and what they produce. You’ll value the local landscape more because you’ll be involved in it, you’ll feel that connection to your community. You can drive past, you can go and visit. And that money will stay within our own community.
Purchasers at today’s auction will get a certificate from Bimbadeen, a voluntary contract to say they’ll hold that carbon for you for two years, an insetting sticker and a Google ID of the paddock and a map. You will feel so good you will feel like you’re walking on sunshine. So when you’re having a low day, you can pull up a map of where your carbon is stored, and feel good again.
This is an edited transcript of Bhavani Rooks’ introduction to Australia’s first auction of carbon insets, held as part of Totally Renewable Phillip Island’s open day last Sunday.
Job done: Ric Oldham, who bought the first tonne of carbon inset, second from left, Anne and Bob Davie, who donated the insets, and auctioneer Greg Price