West Australia's vast swathes of timber plantations could help Australia reach its emissions goal much quicker than forecast.
Under a new method introduced this year by the Clean Energy Regulator, existing plantations can receive Australian Carbon Credit Units for a continued plantation forest under the Emissions Reduction Fund – with the forestry industry able to sequester and store carbon into existing plantations for profit.
It is estimated there are about 362,000 hectares of plantations in WA, according to the Department of Agriculture.
The plantations had previously only been allowed to participate in the Emissions Reduction Fund if new forests were established, or if existing short-rotation forests switched to long rotations.
Response to 'rort' claims
The ABC earlier this year reported claims by former Emissions Reduction Assurance Committee chair Andrew Mackintosh that the carbon offset market had become a "rort".
Ents Forestry, based in Albany, is consulting with the Clean Energy Regulator to start its own carbon project.
Managing director Andy Wright said the forestry plantation carbon schemes were different to the ones to which the former chair was referring.
"We're probably comparing apples and bananas," he said.
"Some of the other schemes that Andrew [Macintosh] is putting the blowtorch to [are] things like human induced regeneration ... they're the ones he's cranky about," Mr Wright said.
He said forestry companies would be either growing trees where there were none previously, stored more carbon than before, or where the forestry crop had marginal economics.
"Rather than return that back to a non-tree land use, the addition of the carbon sales means we can continue to have trees in the landscape on that spot, so it's like deferred deforestation," he said.
Plantations to consider carbon projects
Mr Wright said all forestry businesses around Australia would be looking closely at the initiative and would throw resources at it.
"It's a project the government's been working on a long time from the greenhouse office to develop mechanisms whereby companies reduce their amount of carbon emissions to the atmosphere," he said.
"In particular, that's of interest to us growing forests, which are probably the … easiest ones to think of as storing carbon."
Mr Wright said it would be an additional income stream to usual business operations, while also having additional environmental benefits.
"Forestry businesses are seeing it as the next favourable policy environment to drive the next wave of forest investment in Australia, and it needs it because it's not Hollywood returns in forestry, it's very long-term — lots of hurt money," he said.
"It does make forestry look like a better long-term investment class that's good for the planet."
Positive environmental impacts
Ross Kingwell from the School of Agriculture and Environment at the University of WA said the forestry carbon schemes would impact national emission reduction targets.
"If those trees grow sufficiently well, then every year's growth of those trees represents the storage of atmospheric carbon in those trees, and the removal of atmospheric CO2 into the roots and shoots of those trees … that's a clear environmental benefit," Professor Kingwell said.
"The goal of most governments and industries is to reduce emissions."
He said that would require either technology to prevent emissions at source, or it meant abating those emissions so it was sequestrating the atmospheric CO2 in a stored form such as timber.
"In the end, we do need to as a nation reduce our emissions," he said.
Mr Wright said it would give his company the means to meet government goals in a constructive and commercial way.
"It will be very helpful for maintaining the forests in the landscape and fulfilling the government's commitments to 20 billion trees and all the other things that we hear in those high-level policy announcements," he said.
Professor Kingwell said the opportunity to use land for either sequestration or other purposes was of benefit because it meant there was a lot more demand for how to best use land across regions of Australia.
Unlikely uptake in other industries
Professor Kingwell said it was unlikely there would be a huge uptake in moving agricultural land to forestry.
"Today, the price of Australian carbon credit units has not been sufficiently high to attract much land away from agriculture into revegetation," he said.
"Grain and animal prices are very high, which means that most farmland is attractively remaining in agriculture."
