Carbon Credits

There are schemes like the Woodland Guarantee Scheme to encourage landowners to plant trees then claim credits over the next 30 years. How to make 'carbon farming' more viable.

WWF & Tesco Report "It’s important that farmers understand that, once they sell carbon offset credits, they can’t then count them towards the farm’s own efforts to cut carbon, collaborating with their customers to cut emissions and sequester carbon within the supply chain, rather than selling the offsets to other sectors, could be a safer bet for farmers."

British farmers looking to cash in on cutting carbon "Under cost pressures post-Brexit, farmers in the UK can potentially help with carbon removal and biodiversity protection, but such practices are expensive. It may be too early for them to sell carbon credits, but other schemes are emerging for channelling capital into the agricultural sector.

Concerns

New schemes encourage trees not food.

Scotland Scotland's food security could be 'eroded' if tighter tree planting safeguards on productive farmland are not implemented, NFU Scotland has warned.

While the union remains supportive of the integration of woodlands into farm businesses, it is 'fundamentally opposed' to largescale forestry expansion on productive farmland. “On a weekly, if not daily basis, members are contacting us from all parts of the country about the loss of productive Scottish agricultural land to wholesale forestry".

Wales The 'wild west' of carbon offsetting is destroying Welsh farming communities. Geraint Davies, Labour MP for Swansea West, quizzed Welsh farmers about how it helped the climate crisis when British Airways bought up Welsh farms to put trees on them in order that they could fly more planes.

He was referring to an example in Carmarthenshire, where a dozen farms have reportedly been sold to make way for afforestation projects, but there are also examples in Ceredigion and Breconshire too. It is quite "ridiculous", he told the Welsh Affairs Committee, that farming in Wales was being displaced "because of some sort of carbon offset to enable BA to fly more planes around the world". Stay up to date with Concerns

Soil Carbon Code

Three projects have been awarded funding to help develop new carbon markets for regenerative agriculture, saltmarsh restoration and lowland peatlands. Surely this is good - after all the government kept 'promising the earth'.

Riddle me this. If the government thought soils so important why is it not investing directly in them? DEFRA has made it clear that soil is NOT a public good so not suitable for public monies, as the mantra kept repeating "public monies for public goods" and we thought they meant soil.

Instead of which it wants private investors to put money in.

The last time the government did this was during the Thatcher years when she stopped funding any research that was 'applied' (Rotshchild Commission) saying industry should fund it. That left most agricultural research dependent on industry, most of which took a swerve. As a result 3/4 of all land-based research stations then closed.

The first to be sold off was the flagship research station - Plant Breeding Institute, Cambridge, in late 80's. It was sold to Unilever - who sold it on to Monsanto. Look whose name is cropping up now - Unilever - who recently announced that its brands will collectively invest €1 billion in a new dedicated Climate & Nature Fund, which will fund landscape restoration, reforestation, carbon sequestration, wildlife protection and water preservation projects." (Check that they are winning NEIRF bids)

Carbon Offsets

Where the idea for carbon offset comes from.

Much of the money taken from farmers' subsidies is going to a range of new schemes, run by consortia off the farm, dealing with a broader landscape. The first funds are called NEIRF, and twice as many groups applied for this as expected. Most of the successful bids seem to have one big outside investor, much in control. Many of us thought that the Landscape Recovery Fund, which this is part of, would be about landscape, whereas the bids were much more about 'carbon credits'.

Most bids include various ways to capture 'carbon credits' in order for other companies/organisations to claim 'carbon offsets' so that they can then claim they are 'carbon zero'. As part of this process the buzz words are Stacking and Bundling of BES (biodiversity and ecosystem services) produced on a single piece of land have emerged partly in response to the challenge of obtaining enough investment to maintain the full suite of ecosystem services. Schemes that just reward one ‘service’ like carbon offsetting, tend not to promote multiple services. The idea is for investors to get more ’eco-value’ for their money. Other elements - such as species improvement and water quality control, can either be 'bundled' into one - or 'stacked' so that they can attract separate credits. But there are no actual separate credit schemes in UK for these.

Carbon Offsets Concerns include "inappropriate legislation (wrong context and weak safeguards) and poor implementation. For example, many projects have sold emissions reductions that would simply have happened anyway or “avoided emissions” that would never have happened. Others have sold investments in poorly implemented nature-based solutions that do not last, such as monoculture plantations with short lifespans, or projects that have a negative impact on the natural environment "

This is coming from USA, where Biden has invested a few million to what was a dying way of doing things - until 'carbon zero' came in. This way forward seeks to divide the environment into many small pieces to then use loads of algorithms to monetise it sufficiently for markets to make money from it. It is a new take of how grains were used in early civilisations, as they could be measured, stored and sold, making for powerful new political structures.

Soil Carbonscape
“Landscape to carbonscape: the roadmap to a soil carbon marketplace” explored the mechanisms whereby soil carbon is being bought and sold in the UK and overseas, and the various economic, scientific, practical and legal issues that need to be addressed before a robust, scalable and coherent marketplace can be established. They heard from businesses already involved in monetising carbon sequestration and experts in nature-based carbon code development .

It was emphasised throughout that soil carbon sequestration needs to be understood in the context of overall improvements in soil health - as a proxy indicator for biodiversity gain, flood risk management, improved soil structure and other benefits.

Representatives of the five participating businesses (see Annex 1) provided an overview of their individual perspectives and experiences of trading in soil carbon (individual company presentations are available here). There was considerable optimism about the potential size of the market, based on global demand, insights from investors and farmers and recent experience selling carbon in Europe and around the UK.

There was also a clear acknowledgement of the risk (environmental and economic), associated with establishing such a market, and the dangers of a cowboy marketplace emerging if these were not addressed. To that end, there was considerable consensus about some of the practicalities and principles at stake.

Even 'The Archers' are on to it! Transcript of 10/10/21, Stella pitching to the BL Board...

These challenges include:

  • Credibility: Any sequestered carbon needs to be ‘real’ - scientifically verifiable, according to robust, high-integrity methodologies.

  • Verifiability: The methodologies and measurements need to be verified by a trusted, independent third party organisation and in some instances according to a formal or official protocol, code or standard.

  • Additionality: Any sequestered carbon be over and above what would have occurred anyway under business-as-usual conditions.

  • Permanence: Since sequestration is reversible, incentivised practices must be continued to retain the carbon over an agreed period of time.

  • Transparency: Rules need to be established to avoid double-counting - separate market players claiming the same carbon offset for their own purposes.

  • Leakage: Carbon sequestered should not lead to CO2 or GHG increases elsewhere.

  • Fairness: Schemes should not reward land managers who are not making efforts elsewhere in their operations - or long-term carbon loss.

Don't sell carbon cheaply CAAV says "Not only is the value of the carbon stored in farmers’ soils and woodland likely to increase in coming years, signing up to selling it might unwittingly tie them into restrictive agreements. Very basically, the simple business of being a farmer is about managing carbon, and if you are in a position where you can’t touch the carbon you have sold, this will limit your ability to farm.”