Australia’s carbon credit scheme has been called a “rort” by the former head of a major environmental watchdog.
As head of the Emissions Reductions Assurance Committee (ERAC), ANU Professor Andrew McIntosh was tasked with overseeing the integrity of the carbon credit scheme.
He now says the scheme – which is a cornerstone of Australia’s path to net zero worth billions of dollars – lacks integrity.
“An environmental market without integrity is not an environmental market. It is a rort,” Professor McIntosh told ABC’s 7:30 on Wednesday.
“I feel that Australia’s carbon market is just that, it has degenerated to become a rort.”
Landowners can earn credits in a number of ways including forest regeneration or preservation.
For each credit – marketed as equal to one tonne of avoided emissions – they can then sell them to the government or in the private market to businesses looking to offxjmtzywset their emissions.
“It appears from the analysis we‘ve done and the evidence we have seen that somewhere in the order of 70 to 80 per cent of the credits that have been issued are markedly low in integrity,” Professor McIntosh said.
“So basically payments are being made to people to not chop down forests that were never going to be chop down, to grow forests that are already there, to grow forests in places that will never sustain permanent forests.”
ANU Professor Don Butler told 7:30 that many of the reforestation projects were being carried out in drier parts of the country and were destined to fail due to a lack of rainfall.
“The forest cover may arise in a really wet year, but even if you‘re that lucky, it is going to go away again in the next drought,” he said.
“There won’t be a permanent change.”
“The sensible place to put carbon projects is in areas where forests have been cleared so you‘ve then got a big opportunity to restore the forest and regrow the carbon in the landscape.”
Professor Macintosh was replaced as head of ERAC by former mining and gas industry lobbyist, David Byres.
Mr Byres said claims projects were being wrongly accredited had been investigated and not yielded any solid evidence.
However, Professor McIntosh says the regulator is approving carbon credits in areas that have never been cleared, resulting in a net loss to the environment when large companies are allowed to continue to emit.
“Low-quality carbon credits are used to offset emissions from large polluters. That is actually making the situation worse,” he said.
“It is actually resulting in increased emissions because we get increased emissions from the large polluters but we don‘t get the offset in reduction.”
