Greg Hunt’s carbon illusion

How many tonnes of CO2 could be sequestered with compliant soil carbon offsets?

I have used an inventory approach to estimate the maximum CO2 sequestration that would be achievable in Australian soils without major changes to land use and at what cost. Land use figures were taken from Australian Resource Atlas and rate of carbon uptake under various soil management practices from CSIRO Land and Water.

My estimates for annual CO2 sequestration in Australian soils are:

• Up to 22 million tonnes of Kyoto compliant soil carbon offsets at prices of $25 - $200 per tonne may be generated from cleared agricultural land. In other words up to a quarter of the 85 million tonnes claimed by the Liberal Party, 95 per cent of which would cost 2.5-20 times more than they claim.

What about non-compliant offsets?

• Up to 100 million t CO2 /year might be sequestered by destocking 200 million ha (more than half) of the rangelands to less than 20 per cent of current levels, using non-compliant ‘stewardship agreements’. There is huge temporal and spatial variation in rangeland soil carbon; it is quickly lost in wildfire, drought and erosion events. A research and measurement program over at least two decades would be required to determine if any carbon has been sequestered or whether rangeland carbon levels are continuing to decline. For this reason, not enough is known to even estimate sequestration rates and create con-compliant offsets. In any case these could not be counted towards national carbon reduction targets.
• Stewardship agreements may be effective but only if government were to buy up pastoral leases to ensure permanence.  This would be a positive action in terms of conserving biodiversity, reducing methane emissions and perhaps increasing soil carbon.

Note that the Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency (DCCEE) estimate that less than one million tonnes of non-compliant CO2 offsets will be achievable from soil sequestration under the current Carbon Farming Initiative at a price of $33/tonne. These will not be counted towards Labor’s carbon reduction target.

The Coalition’s ‘Direct Action’ is a ‘do nothing’ carbon policy. It is impossible that bogus soil carbon offsets created for $10 per tonne CO2will ever be an acceptable way of fulfilling legally binding reduction commitments. Furthermore their incredible claim that a few thousand farmers are ready to step forward and take on the responsibility of reducing 60 per cent of the nation’s CO2 burden for $10 per tonne is preposterous.

Their policy indicates that only $150 million per year is to be spent on paying polluters to reduce their emissions. This is like trying to plug the leaks in the Titanic; it would only achieve minor emissions reductions from a few dirty old coal power stations, which should have been phased out years ago.

Continued touting of a soil carbon solution is at best irresponsible and at worst wantonly deceitful.  It appears that the Coalition is taking the cynical view that when soil carbon sequestration is rejected or restricted in international negotiations, they will blame the UN or other countries. Meanwhile, they will have achieved their goal of deferring action for a few more years. They are gambling that enough voters will be convinced by ‘anti -global warming science’ campaigns in the conservative press, as has happened in the US. 

Deniers of global warming don’t care if climate policy is ineffectual. The Coalition is probably right in betting that most swinging voters would not know enough about soil carbon sequestration to challenge their claims. But there is time to raise awareness of this attempted swindle before the next election. The Coalition’s big gamble may not pay off.