Extracted from Environmental Management News  

Tom Fearon
Monday, 3 August 2009

Soils, trees and the ocean slugged it out as the best methods of carbon bio-sequestration at an Environment Business Australia (EBA) conference in Sydney last week. The forum gave the stage to a scientist, soil carbon campaigner and even an owner of a major brown coal company who argued the mineral's case for countering carbon and weaning Australia off its Arab oil addiction.

The EBA forum wrestled the debate over how to cut carbon emissions away from its traditional heartland of power utilities and other high emitters to proponents of carbon storage and, specifically, Australia's biological game plan.

The panelists argued the case for ocean sequestration and ‘terrestrial' carbon locked in trees and soil to be included in international agreements including December's Copenhagen meeting to lower greenhouse gases.

Ignite Energy chief executive John White, a veteran in the alternative energy and resource management sectors, including with advanced waste processor Global Renewables Limited, said brown coal could play a "significant role" in helping farmlands absorb CO2 and reduce Australia's dependence on offshore oil through a coal-to-oil scheme.

Dr White, whose company owns the licence for 200-300 billion tonnes of deep seam lignite, a third of Victoria's brown coal, estimates Australia's agricultural land has the potential to sequester about 500 million tonnes of CO2.

He said it was "inevitable" government would eventually get on board with big business in cutting a compromise for soil carbon offsets.

"One of the [coal industry's] biggest, most reliable ways of offsetting from coal burning and smelting is bio-sequestration. So a number of us are forming agreements with landowners to help them change their cropping and fertilising practices," Dr White said.

"Once we get a dozen or so big emitters, we will argue with government to get these soil carbon offsets approved so we can control a fraction of our balance sheets."

According to Peter Cosier, executive director for the Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists, terrestrial carbon must be taken into account if Australia is to meet its carbon reduction targets.

"If we increased sequestered carbon stock in terrestrial landscapes by 15%, it would offset emissions emitted during the entire industrial revolution," he said.

Cosier pointed out while Australia was best placed to take advantage of terrestrial carbon offsets, we were still suffering under a "perverse rule" from the Kyoto Protocol to counter all emissions from soils, not just human use.

"Australia is unique; we have a massive advantage with terrestrial carbon. We have 20 million people on a continent of 7.5 million square kilometres. The proportion of the potential for offsetting carbon is vastly greater than any other developed country in the world," he said.

"What's stopping us is that if we have a drought and soil carbon is lost, we have to pay for it."

Speaking on behalf of Soil Carbon, an Australian company that sequesters carbon in topsoil, director Tony Lovell argued the best solution was to put carbon "back where it belongs in the earth".

Soil carbon has not been included in the Federal Government's proposed emissions trading scheme, but the National Farmers Federation recently indicated it was modifying its opposition and was now recommending farmers be allowed to generate credits on a voluntary basis.

Under Soil Carbon's scheme, carbon is sequestered into the ground near the actively growing roots of pasture grasses, which he said was "cheap, efficient and ecologically beneficial".

"Australia has the potential to bury one and a half times its emissions in the earth using 58% of the country's grazing land," Lovell told the conference.

"A net gain of organic carbon into soils is a win-win for plants and animals, but a net gain of organic carbon into the atmosphere is a lose-lose."

Another carbon bio-sequestration solution proposed at the EBA forum was "ocean sinks", whereby carbon is deposited in the world's deepest oceans.

Oceans Nourishment managing director John Ridley said the upcoming international climate deal should include oceans sinks.

"The oceans have the largest capacity to absorb carbon, compared to both the atmosphere around the Earth and the Earth itself. The oceans hold 40,000 gigatonnes of carbon, while the atmosphere currently stores less than 1,000 gigatonnes," he said.