The method is based on the assumption that livestock grazing significantly reduces tree growth and forest cover, but scientific evidence shows this is incorrect.
Credits are routinely issued for tree growth that would have happened anyway.He said a lack of transparency was a major problem with the system. Macintosh said there was nothing in the legislation stopping the regulator from releasing the data aggregated across all project sites, or on a project-by-project basis with identifying information removed.
Legislation prevented it from releasing data from the specific forest areas that had been used to estimate the change in carbon storage due to regrowth, but they did not match Macintosh’s analysis, it said. On the native forest regeneration method, it said a review had found “a very high” level of compliance. It said issuing carbon credits was underpinned by “rigorous assessment processes” using geographic information system mapping and other “big data”, and that compliance was assured through audits. The regulator said it had “well established and rigorous processes” to address potential conflicts of interest that arose from it developing carbon credits methods and issuing and purchasing credits, and that the emissions reduction fund was a “robust offsets scheme with a high degree of integrity”. “Analytical material provided previously by Professor Macintosh has been refuted by more sophisticated independent analysis,” a spokesperson said. The regulator rejected Macintosh’s assertions, saying both it and the committee had undertaken considerable work using independent experts to test claims made by Macintosh and found no evidence to support them. “It is a case study in poor governance,” he said. Macintosh said the failures in the carbon credit system were in part due to a single agency, the Clean Energy Regulator, being responsible for almost everything: designing and regulating carbon credit methods, advising and providing the secretariat for the committee that oversees the integrity of the methods, and buying credits on behalf of the government. More recently, as demand for credits increased with fossil fuel companies under pressure to show they were addressing the climate crisis, he believed the government had made a conscious decision to prioritise building an abundant supply of cheap offsets over ensuring their integrity.Īndrew Macintosh criticised the award of carbon credits to projects that capture methane from landfill to generate electricity. Macintosh said he believed the initial errors in how carbon credits were issued were unintentional, but subsequently attempts had been made to cover up those mistakes. “The public deserves an explanation for what has occurred and what can be done to ensure this does not happen again,” he said. He called for it to abolish the flawed methods, stop low integrity projects from receiving further credits and set up an independent inquiry into the failures of the system with the power to compel people to give evidence. Macintosh described himself as a “deep believer” in the ability of environmental markets to drive behaviour change and improve environmental outcomes in a cost-effective manner, but said the government needed to take immediate steps for the carbon market to be worthwhile. “People are getting credits for not clearing forests that were never going to be cleared, they are getting credits for growing trees that are already there, they are getting credits for growing forests in places that will never sustain permanent forests and they are getting credits for operating electricity generators at large landfills that would have operated anyway.” ‘The public deserves an explanation’ “What is occurring is a fraud on the environment, a fraud on taxpayers and a fraud on unwitting consumers,” he said. A billion dollars in public money has been wasted Prof Andrew Macintosh It meant the carbon credits generated did not represent “additional” cuts in emissions, as required under law. Macintosh said nearly two-thirds of the claimed cuts in emissions would have happened anyway because the power projects were economically viable without carbon credit revenue. The researchers also found problems with projects at landfill sites that are awarded credits for capturing methane – a potent greenhouse gas released from waste – and using it to run on-site electricity generators.
They still received 8.2m carbon credits, worth more than $100m. For 59 of the projects, the amount of forest was found to have reduced.
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