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Making soil carbon credits work for climate change mitigation

Elaine Mitchell, Naoya Takeda, Liam Grace, Peter Grace, Ken Day, Sahar Ahmadi, Warwick Badgery, Annette Cowie, Aaron Simmons, Richard Eckard, Matthew Tom Harrison, William Parton, Brian Wilson, Susan Orgill, Raphael A. Viscarra Rossel, David Pannell, Paige Stanley, Felicity Deane and David Rowling

In 2023, the Australian Government issued ~250,000 soil carbon credits following a measurement period characterised by high rainfall (Decile 10). The inferred soil organic carbon (SOC) sequestration rates during this period, ranging from ~2 to 8 t C ha−1 yr−1, significantly exceed rates reported in Australian scientific studies (~0.1 to 1.2 t C ha−1 yr−1). Our analysis, incorporating SOC and biomass measurements alongside remote sensing of NDVI, reveals that these SOC gains were largely attributable to above-average rainfall rather than project interventions. Moreover, these gains were not sustained when rainfall returned to average levels, raising concerns about the durability of credited sequestration and its additionality beyond natural climatic variability. Our findings demonstrate that current safeguards within the Soil Carbon Method—such as withholding 25% of credits during the first measurement period—are likely insufficient to account for climatic variability. To strengthen the integrity of the carbon crediting system, we recommend extending the minimum measurement period for credit issuance to at least five years. Additionally, governments should establish science-based ‘reasonable bounds’ for expected long-term SOC gains from management practices to sense-check reported outcomes. These measures will ensure that credited SOC sequestration is more closely tied to management-driven outcomes rather than short-term climate-driven fluctuations.

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Who’s Counting Newsletter, Issue 14, November 2024

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Publications

National greenhouse gas emission inventories, filling the gaps in official data

OECD Environment Working Papers No. 252

This paper addresses the need for a comprehensive global dataset on national greenhouse gas (GHG) emission inventories to support policy analysis and track progress towards climate change mitigation goals. While numerous datasets exist, gaps in official data, particularly from developing countries, hinder their utility. The paper develops a methodology to compile a complete dataset, prioritizing official data reported to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the OECD. To fill gaps, estimates based on unofficial datasets, such as PRIMAP, will be used, as they demonstrate the greatest alignment with official data in terms of emission levels, trends, and categories. As official data become available under the Enhanced Transparency Framework of the Paris Agreement, estimated values would be replaced and additional data collection would not be necessary. The dataset disaggregates emissions by IPCC categories, gases, countries, and years, distinguishing between official data points and estimates. This harmonized dataset enhances transparency, improves data collection efficiencies, and enables more robust evidence-based policy analysis. Moving forward, the paper recommends refining the dataset with sector-specific data and fostering collaboration with international organizations to improve the reliability and consistency of global GHG emissions data and indicators.

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Publications

Land-use competition in 1.5°C climate stabilization: is there enough land for all potential needs?

Angelo Gurgel, Jennifer Morris, Martin Haigh, Andy D. Robertson, Robin van der Ploeg and Sergey Paltsev

Achieving a low-carbon future requires a comprehensive approach that combines emission mitigation options from economic activities with the sustainable use of land for numerous needs: food production, energy production, carbon sequestration, nature preservation and broad ecosystem services. Using the MIT Integrated Global System (IGSM) framework we analyze land-use competition in a 1.5°C climate stabilization scenario, in which demand for bioenergy and natural sinks increase along with the need for sustainable farming and food production. We find that to address the numerous trade-offs, effective approaches to nature-based solutions (NBS) and agriculture practices are essential. With proper regulatory policies and radical changes in current practices, global land is sufficient to provide increased consumption of food per capita (without large diet changes) over the century while also utilizing 2.5–3.5 billion hectares (Gha) of land for NBS practices that provide a carbon sink of 3–6 gigatonnes (Gt) of CO2 per year as well as 0.4–0.6 Gha of land for energy production—0.2–0.3 Gha for 50–65 exajoules (EJ) per year of bioenergy and 0.2–0.35 Gha for 300–600 EJ/year of wind and solar power generation. We list the competing uses of land to reflect the tradeoffs involved in land use decisions, and note that while there is sufficient land in our scenario, attaining this outcome, capable of delivering a 1.5°C future, requires effective policies and measures at national and global levels that promote efficient land use for food, energy and nature (including carbon sequestration) and ensure long-term commitments by decision makers from governments and industry in order to realize the benefits of climate change mitigation.

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Identifying rice varieties for mitigating methane and nitrous oxide emissions under intermittent irrigation

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A restatement of the natural science evidence base concerning grassland management, grazing livestock and soil carbon storage

Approximately a third of all annual greenhouse gas emissions globally are directly or indirectly associated with the food system, and over a half of these are linked to livestock production. In temperate oceanic regions, such as the UK, most meat and dairy is produced in extensive systems based on pasture. There is much interest in the extent to which such grassland may be able to sequester and store more carbon to partially or completely mitigate other greenhouse gas emissions in the system. However, answering this question is difficult due to context-specificity and a complex and sometimes inconsistent evidence base. This paper describes a project that set out to summarize the natural science evidence base relevant to grassland management, grazing livestock and soil carbon storage potential in as policy-neutral terms as possible. It is based on expert appraisal of a systematically assembled evidence base, followed by a wide stakeholders engagement. A series of evidence statements (in the appendix of this paper) are listed and categorized according to the nature of the underlying information, and an annotated bibliography is provided in the electronic supplementary material.

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Publications

Policy evaluation and the causal analysis of public support

Stefano Carattini, Robert Dur, John List

Many policies that are generally considered socially desirable by the scientific community, based on modelling and causal empirical analyses, are not very widespread. The main driver is often lack of public support at baseline (“ex ante”). Yet, there is evidence that when voters hold biased beliefs ex ante about a given policy, experiencing the policy first-hand may lead them to correct their beliefs and increase public support (1).

If it was widely documented that opposition to sound policies in part dissipates when voters experience a given policy, then more policy-makers may be inclined to experiment with policies that scientists recommend but that are unpopular ex ante. Systematically combining policy evaluation with causal analysis of public support would allow scholars to create a body of knowledge on the conditions under which policies become more (or less) popular after implementation and what are the drivers of changes in beliefs and public support.

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Publications

Tracking methane super-emitters from space

Jonathan O’Callaghan

No one noticed when an old pipe started spewing methane into the sky in the British countryside. The leak, near a railway line and landfill site in Cheltenham, UK, released more than 200 kilograms of methane an hour, yet the invisible gas went undetected. That was until Emily Dowd, a climate scientist at the University of Leeds, UK, spotted the leak in March 2023 while looking through observations from a passing satellite. “It was completely by chance,” she says.

Dowd had been monitoring the landfill site using data from a methane-detecting satellite 500 kilometres above Earth, built by GHGSat, based in Montreal, Canada. Over the next 11 weeks, she worked with other scientists to identify the exact location of the leak and alert the utility company responsible. “We observed it until it was fixed in June,” she says. Between the time the leak was discovered and when it was fixed, Dowd says, the energy in the methane released was equivalent to the electricity used by 7,500 homes over one year.

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