Carbon Farmers of Australia Blog

Australian pork producers have been cleared to start earning Carbon Credits under the Carbon Farming Initiative by cutting emissions from manure. They can also slash their power costs by turning the emissions into fuel. Capturing methane at the point of release, farmers can burn it by ‘flaring’ or they can go further and use it to provide on-farm energy to run equipment and heating.

Burning Methane (CH4) produces CO2 that is emitted instead. Methane has 24 times the Global Warming Potential of Carbon Dioxide. The farmer earns 24 tonnes of CO2 offsets for every tonne of Methane captured and burned.

The manure management methodology that makes these opportunities possible is the first released under the Carbon Farming Initiative and was launched yesterday by Agriculture Minister Joe Ludwig and Parliamentary Secretary for Climate Change and Energy Efficiency Mark Dreyfus. The project involves retrofitting an impermeable cover and sludge management system to an existing unheated anaerobic pond at a southern Queensland breeder unit piggery.

The cost of installing basic methane capture infrastructure is likely to range from around $75,000 to $200,000 depending on the size of the piggery. The Australian pork industry suggests that by using the methodology, producers could increase the return on each finished carcass by around $3.45. Preliminary trials suggest the payback period for this infrastructure ranges from 18 months to five years in smaller operations. 680 commercial piggery operations in Australia stand to benefit from the CFI via this process.

A trial was conducted at a piggery in Grantham in Queensland. Project manager Alan Skerman said the methane released from ponds of swine waste could be used not only to heat a piggery's sheds, but also to create usable energy through an electrical generator. "There's the potential there to reduce the farm's use of LPG by about half, substituting biogas for the LPG that's used for heating the piggery sheds," he said. "As well as those financial benefits, the owner can get extra income through carbon credits…. But there's the potential for the widespread roll-out of this technology in the pig industry."

The methodology was developed in collaboration with the Australian Government, the pork industry and Queensland DPI scientists, and assessed by the independent Domestic Offsets Integrity Committee.

Carbon Farmers of Australia have a soil carbon sequestration methodology before the Committee which could deliver benefits to 130,000 Australian farmers.

"There would be no Carbon Farming Initiative were it not for the work of Michael and Louisa Kiely." Greg Hunt is an unusual man: an intellectual, an environmentalist, and a member of the Abbott Shadow Cabinet. We met him when he was visiting Rhonda and Bill Daly's compost operation in Young. In his speech, Greg quoted Lawrence of Arabia: "Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that all was vanity; but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes, and make it possible."

He described Bill and Rhonda as 'dangerous people' for their vision of the future of soil health. And we are dangerous people, he said. How dangerous can a couple of day dreamers believers be?

You know who your friends are when someone tells you what everyone else has been thinking. A friend who happens to be a highly regarded soil scientist recently raised an issue about an assertion in one of our press releases, ie. Col Seis's rate of increase of soil carbon at 9t/ha/yr, as follows:

"Using photosynthesis alone and growing plants alone this would be very, very difficult. Just to grow 9t/ha/yr of above ground biomass would be a good effort in many areas, let alone convert that to soil carbon. The only possibility is to bring in a carbon source from outside as a mulch or compost. Then it would probably require large additions of mulch or compost to get increases of this amount."

Our response:

Re 9t/ha/yr, you're right - incorporation of litter is not enough to explain this rate of soil carbon sequestration. As I said in the press release, the nature of carbon farming is such that multiple techniques of soil management are applied at the same time. In the case of Col Seis's well-studied soils, he has used/is using several techniques such as grazing management, pasture cropping, and compost teas. He has been managing his soils this way for 10 years. He doubled his soil carbon in 8 years then doubled it again in 2 years. We have other data from experienced carbon farmers - none as dramatic as 9t/ha/yr, but much of it significantly different to that measured by scientists. There are several possible explanations for this:

1. Science has yet to study the impact of multiple soil management practices.

2. Science has yet to study these combined techniques over the time period required for maximum response.

3. There are phototrophic and autotrophic bacteria that do not need organic matter to create energy, capable of photosynthesis.

4. Soil microbial activity is stimulated by practices that encourage root zone action, including exudates and nutrient fixing.

5. The combined effect of the techniques triggers a compounding or multiplier effect in the soil.

6. Soil carbon could have emergent properties which impact on sequestration rates. (Ie. properties that emerge as soil carbon levels increase – such as increased biodiversity in soil microbial communities – that can drive these increases faster and wider).

I suspect many non-farmers would favour one or other of the following:

7. Carbon farmers routinely misreport their soil carbon results.

8. Carbon farmers are not competent to take soil samples.

There is so much we don't know. We do know that the science is not in on the use of combinations of sequestration practices and won't be for some time. Meanwhile we must do what we can with what we have.

Cheers!
Michael

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PS. We would not expect that rate of increase to continue. Some farmers have noticed that there would appear to be a tipping point at around 7 years when changes in soil management really kick in, at least with grazing management. Soil carbon levels appear to bounce up and down in an upward direction - like a basketball bouncing upstairs. Which is why a system of averaging over 5 years is a sound approach.

“In operationalising the Absolute Global Warming Potential concept, the Kyoto Protocol sets 100 years as the reference time frame over which cumulative radiative forcing is to be measured. Over this 100-year period, the decay curve integral is equivalent to the forcing effect of approximately 55 tonne-years of CO2. Hence, we can infer that removing 1tCO2 from the atmosphere and storing it for 55 years counteracts the radiative forcing effect, integrated over a 100-year time horizon, of a 1 t CO2 pulse emission. Under the terms of the Kyoto Protocol, the AGWP100 of CO2 represents the radiative effect of a pulse emission which any sequestration-based activity is designed to counteract (or indeed, any emission reduction activity is designed to avoid or delay). In effect therefore, as understood by the Protocol, carbon sequestered at t=0 and stored until t=55 is directly equivalent to an avoided emission at t=0 and could be credited accordingly. Any new emission from the subsequent release of the stored carbon at t=55 would not be deemed to have caused any additional radiative forcing effects to those which characterized the start point of the project, measured over the 100-year reference period from the point of emission/sequestration. This timeframe of equivalence between sequestered and emitted CO2 is here called the ‘Equivalence Time’ (Te). The re-emission of sequestered carbon after its storage for t=Te does not affect this equivalence.”[1][1]

[1] Pedro Moura Costa and Charlie Wilson, An equivalence factor between CO2 avoided emissions and sequestration – description and applications in forestry, Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change, Volume 5, Number 1, 51-60

Various accounting systems for carbon sinks have entertained periods other than 100 Years before this. “Carbon accounting methodologies have been devised especially for sinks projects, taking into account the technical differences in relation to other types of emission reduction projects,” according to a 2002 Winrock report for the US EPA.[1]. “The treatment of permanence, therefore, influences and is influenced by the choice of carbon accounting methodologies, the timeframes chosen for carbon accounting, and the approach chosen for dealing with liabilities (i.e., the need to return or replace carbon credits if carbon is released to the atmosphere.”)

There are IPCC precedents for accounting periods of 20, 30 and 60 years. The Milan conference of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change established two types of emission offsets under the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), valid for afforestation and reforestation activities. ‘In order to account for the non-permanent nature of carbon storage in forests, these credits expire after a predefined periods, after which the buyer needs to replace them.

The Verified Carbon Standard (VCS), the most widely used carbon accounting standard among projects issuing credits in the voluntary market, allows for a period of 25 years. Redd Forests, the Australian based carbon project developer, has achieved validation of its Tasmanian Improved Forestry Management projects that avoids the emissions of greenhouse gases resulting from the logging, chipping and pulping of the timber into short-lived paper products. Instead the forests will be protected and managed by their owners for 25 years.[2]

[1] Louise Aukland and Pedro Moura Costa, Review of methodologies relating to the issue of permanence for LULUCF projects, Winrock International/EPA, October 2002

[2] Redd Forests, PROTECTING THE DEVIL’S FORESTS, Tasmanian forests saved and private landowners rewarded, Press Release, 4 April, 2011

An IPCC Special Report on Carbon dioxide Capture and Storage reveals another example of such an approach in the “tonne-year alternative for accounting” that defines an artificial equivalence so that capture and storage for a given time interval (for example, t years) are equated with permanent storage. Typically capture and storage for one year would result in a number of credits equal to 1/t, and thus storage for t years would result in one full credit. A variety of constructs have been proposed for defining the number of storage years that would be equated with permanent storage. “Despite being based on scientific and technical considerations, this equivalence is basically a political decision.”[1]

[1] IPCC Working Group III, Mitigation of Climate Change, Carbon Dioxide Capture and Storage.

“This 100 year timeframe is a policy-determination, not a technical one,” reveals an EcoSecurities report.[1] It is a period chosen by the IPCC for calculating the Global Warming Potential of each different Greenhouse Gas compared to CO2. For instance, Nitrous Oxide has a GWP of 298 (ie., one tonne of N2O is equivalent to 298 tonnes of CO2).

Some believe that 100 years is the time it takes for a tonne of CO2 to cycle through the atmosphere. It is not. This takes only 4 years, according to an IPCC Report. “The turnover time of CO2 in the atmosphere, measured as the ratio of the content to the fluxes through it, is about 4 years. This means that on average it takes only a few years before a CO2 molecule in the atmosphere is taken up by plants or dissolved in the ocean.”[2] However, it can take far longer for the atmosphere to adjust to the new levels of CO2, up to 200 years.[3]

The EcoSecurities analysts calculate that removing a tonne of CO2 and holding it for 55 years is sufficient to counteract its effect on Global Warming. The IPCC uses 20, 100 and 500 year periods in much of its analysis. “The Kyoto Protocol set the time horizon against which [GWPs] are to be determined at 100 years (addendum to the Protocol, Decision 2/CP.3, para. 3).[4] To be consistent, it can be implied therefore that the Protocol also requires the benefits of sequestration in counteracting the radiative forcing effects of CO2 emissions to be evaluated over a 100 year time horizon. Any uncertainties derive from both this choice of time horizon, as well as future scenarios of atmospheric CO2 concentrations, are not technically driven but rather are a natural consequence of ‘arbitrary’ policy selections.”[5]

[1] Pedro Moura Costa and Charlie Wilson, An equivalence factor between CO2 avoided emissions and sequestration – description and applications in forestry, Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change, Volume 5, Number 1, 51-60

[2] Watson, R.T., Rodhe, H., Oeschger, H. and Siegenthaler, U. 1990. Greenhouse gases and aerosols. In IPCC Report No 1, World Meteorological Organization and United Nations Environment Programme, Cambridge University Press.

[3] “This short time scale must not be confused with the time it takes tor the atmospheric CO2 level to adjust to a new equilibrium if sources or sinks change This adjustment time… is of the order of 50 - 200 years, determined mainly by the slow exchange of carbon between surface waters and the deep ocean.” ibid

[4] Reaffirms that global warming potentials used by Parties should be those provided by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in its Second Assessment Report (“1995 IPCC GWP values”) based on the effects of the greenhouse gases over a 100-year time horizon, taking into account the inherent and complicated uncertainties involved in global warming potential estimates. In addition, for information purposes only, Parties may also use another time horizon, as provided in the Second Assessment Report.” IPCC, REPORT OF THE CONFERENCE OF THE PARTIES ON ITS THIRD SESSION, HELD AT KYOTO FROM 1 TO 11 DECEMBER 1997, PART TWO: ACTION TAKEN BY THE CONFERENCE OF THE PARTIES AT ITS THIRD SESSION, 25 March 1998, P. 31, Decision 2/CP.3

[5] APPENDIX: 100 YEARS A FICTION? (Below)

The short term, make-or-break role of soil carbon is as ‘a bridge to the future’, as depicted by the world’s most eminent soil carbon scientist, Dr Rattan Lal. Lal and his colleagues believe that carbon farming can stall Global Warming: “The technical potential of carbon sequestration in world soils may be 2 billion to 3 billion mt per year for the next 50 years. The potential of carbon sequestration in soils and vegetation together is equivalent to a draw-down of about 50 parts per million of atmospheric CO2 by 2100.”[1] This would enable mankind to keep CO2 levels below 450 parts per million and consequently hold global mean temperature from rising through the dangerous 2°C level. Dr Lal declares that. this process is immediately available, requiring a low cost change in land management practices across the world’s 5 billion hectares of farm land.“C sequestration in terrestrial biosphere (e.g., forests, agricultural soils) is considered a low-hanging fruit, a win-win strategy, and a bridge to the future until low-C or no-C fuel sources take effect.”[2]

Lal’s declaration is supported by America’s most prominent climate scientist, NASA’s James Hansen who said: “A reward system for improved agricultural and forestry practices that sequester carbon could remove the current CO2 overshot… A 50ppm draw down via agriculture and forestry practices seems plausible.”[3]

Australian scientists are recognising that the world has no credible alternative in the short term. The Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists declared: “It will be next to impossible for Australia to achieve the scale of [emissions] reductions required in sufficient time to avoid dangerous climate change unless we also remove carbon from the atmosphere and store it in vegetation and soils.”[4]

The CSIRO acknowledges the phenomenon: “[W]hat [soil carbon sequestration] actually gives us is time to make those adjustments,” according to the CSIRO’s Dr Michael Battaglia.[5]

[1] RATTAN LAL, “The Potential for Soil Carbon Sequestration” in Agriculture and Climate Change: An Agenda for Negotiation in Copenhagen, International Food Policy Research Institute, 2009.

[2] RATTAN LAL, Editorial / Soil & Tillage Research 96 (2007) 1–5

[3] Hansen, J., Mki. Sato, P. Kharecha, D. Beerling, R. Berner, V. Masson-Delmotte, M. Pagani, M. Raymo, D.L. Royer, and J.C. Zachos, 2008: Target atmospheric CO2: Where should humanity aim? Open Atmos. Sci. J., 2, 217-231

[5] DR MICHAEL BATTAGLIA, THEME LEADER, SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE FLAGSHIP, CSIRO, Inquiry into Soil Carbon Sequestration in Victoria, Environment and Natural Resources Committee, Parliament of Victoria, September 2010

Clearly, there is no definition of Permanence for Biosequestration that is dictated by Scientific Fact. The periods quoted range from 4 years to ‘forever’, with points of 20, 50, 55, 100, 200 and 500 years in between. The choice of 100 Years appears to have been a function of the need to find a scale on which to compare the Global Warming Potential of various Greenhouse Gases. Its choice as a time horizon took place as part of the negotiations around the Kyoto Protocols and was based on functional considerations. One function – the engagement of farmers in soil carbon sequestration activities – was overlooked. Several other functions are considered in the following “Time Horizon by Function” table.

The Carbon Credits (Carbon Farming Initiative) Act makes provision for a period other than 100 years to be specified in the regulations. The Minister can make regulations to set the period at any length:

"Part 7, Div. 1, clause 87, Maximum potential relinquishment period (1) For the purposes of this Act, the maximum potential relinquishment period for an eligible offsets project is: (a) 100 years; or (b) if, at the time when the declaration of the project as an eligible offsets project was made, a greater number of years was specified in the regulations—that greater number of years. (2) However, if: (a) the regulations specify a number of years that is less than 100 years; and (b) those regulations are made after the time when the declaration of a project as an eligible offsets project was made; then, despite subsection (1), that lesser number of years is the maximum potential relinquishment period for the eligible offsets project.

Part 9, Div. 3, clause 133 Offsets integrity standards (1) For the purposes of this Act, the offsets integrity standards are as follows: (f) a method specified in a methodology determination in accordance with paragraph 106(1)(c) or (d) in relation to a sequestration offsets project should provide for adjustments to take account of significant cyclical variations that are likely to occur in the amount of carbon sequestered in the relevant carbon pool on the project area or project areas during: (i) a 100 year period; or (ii) if, at the time when the methodology determination was made, another period was specified in the regulations—that other period…”