My first read of Rhys 1 post and there are a few issues with it 1) CO2 group has no guarantee of getting their calculation methodology through the CPRS. The government uses the National Carbon Accounting System (NCAS) which includes the National Carbon Accounting Toolbox (NCAT) which includes FullCAM. It is the method the government uses to report on land use change emissions and sinks under the Kyoto Protocol. The government has constantly said that this will be the method that carbon sinks will have to account for sequestration, so no matter how good the CO2 groups accounting is they will have to either hand over their IP to NCAT or use FullCAM figures which will dramatically reduce their forecasts of sequestration, so who has the delivery risk, them or the buyers.
With no CPRS and the current make up of the NCOS there is no avenue to market for forest sequestration, this will only change when either the CPRS is dumped permanently and the NCOS comes into effect and accepts trees, the NCOS ( sorry National Carbon Offset Standard) is voluntary and we expect prices to be in the 5-7 AUD range, about 1/4 of the expected CPRS price.
The models that CO2 group have produced are for one species of tree and as I understand it ( and I may very well be very wrong) was done on one location in the Western Australian wheat belt and this has been extrapolated to other areas, whilst this might have got past the greenhouse friendly and NSW GGAS verifiers it may be very different getting it past ACCRA( Australian Climate Change Regulatory Authority).
If the CO2 group do get their calculation through then it will be available to everyone else through NCAT and FullCAM and there goes there competitive advantage. Other groups such as Carbon conscience and Elem entree use similar species and run on the same principle of leasing land or providing annuity payments in return for carbon rights- I have concerns that over time landholders will wake up tot he fact that they do not need the likes of CO2 group as ACCRA is making this easier and easier all the time and it will be easy to manage your own project like some companies offer eg Australian Carbon Traders. Other models where the rights are leased such as TreeSmart and NGO organizations such as Greening Australia and Landcare CarbonSMART, Men of trees and many others offer high biodiversity outcomes and more farmer friendly models.
Rhys talks about getting the seed, there is no problem getting seed and you can very quickly build the capacity of nurseries to get seeds, I know of very few if any projects that have been postponed because of lack of seed stock.
On the plus side - CO2 group run little risk in their operations are in the establishment and management of the projects, they are well run and very reputable.
I wonder where in the long term they will get revenue form, at some point they will exhaust the avaialbel and viable land, form that poiunt opn someone will need to take care of the long term liability of the establsihed sites wiht little if any income, what then?
Not everything is as it seems.
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