Now that was a busy day!
How many announcements can you take in one day?
Today, we announced the Soil Carbon Taskforce and the Soil Carbon Industry Group (SCIG).
What does this mean?
As you know, Governments like to have a ‘representative organisation’ to deal with – NFF, etc. Well, this is what the Industry Group can give us. This organisation will be member-based and is a company limited by Guarantee. It will have a member-voted board from the first AGM in March 2021. For now, I am Co-Chair with Matthew Warnken from AgriProve, and we have a Standing Committee.
We have a vision to become the industry voice for Soil Carbon Farming. That farmers can be paid fairly for these increases and that we remain at the forefront of Government policy in this space.
We’ll be fundraising to fund a part-time person who will coordinate the Soil Carbon Industry activities, write newsletters, communicate with media, and others. We will train this person in all aspects of the Soil Carbon Industry and Soil Carbon method. They will have opportunities to go to Soil Carbon Projects, see soil carbon soil sampling firsthand, and be part of this evolving industry. He/she will be a central point of contact.
What do you need to do to be part of this? Stay tuned… More on how you can become a member soon… And a job description also.
Meanwhile, 'back at the ranch'...
The Feds decided today was the day to unveil their ‘Technology Investment Roadmap’. You can read another media release here.
What does this mean for Carbon Farming? Well, the Minister and others could be heard saying “soil carbon” so many times today my head started to spin! Yes, in the lottery that is Federal Government climate policy, Soil Carbon has come out a WINNER – wow.
Here is what has been announced:
- The Clean Energy Regulator will now be in charge of developing new and improving existing ERF methods – AND time frames for this will be reduced from over 24 months to 12 months. YAY.
- Both Soil Carbon and ‘Forest Regrowth methods have had substantial work done within Industry to improve methods and increase sequestration potential. Let’s hope they are ‘first cabs off the rank’.
- That they have a ‘stretch goal’ of reducing Soil Carbon testing to $3/ha. HOW? They are going to implement a ‘Soil Carbon Innovation Challenge’. Sounds great, but we need to know much more before getting too excited.
- Further, key agencies such as the funding agencies and the Clean Energy Regulator are to be ‘required’ to focus on accelerating the priority technologies. One word of caution here, Carbon Capture and Storage or CCS is an expensive technology also on the priority list, so we will need to ensure we get our fair share of attention.
Finally, and sorry for the short notice, I am giving a one-hour webinar on Thursday (yes – that is tomorrow) at 11am.
This is the first of 3 and will focus on some of the Carbon 101 topics, but with all these announcements I’ll also update you on the 11th ERF auction and the announcements.
I’ll talk for 40 minutes and look for some great conversation/questions for 20 minutes.
These are the ONLY ones I am giving at the moment. But I could repeat them at some time in the future.
If you’d like to sit in, it’s FREE and you can sign up here.
Now we are really gaining ground…
Onwards!
Register for the webinars