Published: 24/10/2024
The centrepiece of Australia’s climate policy is the Safeguard Mechanism where it places emission caps on companies emitting more than 100,000 tonnes of greenhouse gas annually. This applies to the country’s 219 biggest polluters which combined are responsible for around 30% of Australia’s total annual emissions.
Under the mechanism, emission caps are reduced each year, between 1% and nearly 5%, through to 2030. If a company emits lower than the cap, it will earn tradeable safeguard mechanism credits which can be used to reduce their future net emission obligations, or they could sell them to rival emitters to “offset” their excess emissions for the year.
In a recent AFR article, Fortescue estimates it could earn at least $50 million a year base on its plan to cease emitting carbon by 2030 - though it’s worth noting in 2024, the company exceeded its legislated emission by about 120,000 tonnes of greenhouse gas and thus is obliged to buy about $4.2 million worth of carbon credits.
Following the recent mandatory climate-related reporting requirement (which will be progressively phased in over the next three years commencing in January 2025), companies have three years before they are required to detail their transition plans in the report. Stipulating this requirement emphasises the need for a tangible decarbonisation action plan as opposed to relying on offsets. In the interim, hard-to-abate industries such as coal, oil and gas projects, steel, aluminium, manufacturing, transport and grid-connected power stations can purchase carbon credits (“offsets”) to start making progress right away rather than waiting years for financing and infrastructure to fall into place to install new-zero-emissions hardware or technology. It will also give companies time to carefully evaluate the investment required to decarbonize.
As such, the Australian Carbon Credit Units (ACCUs) represent a key component of the Safeguard Mechanism. In 2023, a total of 1.7 million ACCUs were taken up compared to 950,000 in 2021 with the spot price rising from $16 per tonne in 2021 to $35 per tonne at the start of 2024.
Spot prices are also driven by the number of carbon credit units issued through a range of eligible projects that can reduce greenhouse gas emissions or sequester carbon. This includes renewable energy, energy efficiency, and land management initiatives. However, the integrity for some of these projects has been questioned. For example, projects getting carbon credits for not clearing forests that were never going to be cleared anyway, for growing trees that already exist, for growing forests in places that will never sustain them, and for operating electricity generators at landfills that would have operated anyway should not have qualified.
2023 saw the second highest annual supply of carbon credits (after 2022) with 17.2 million ACCUs issued. The concern centres around the huge supply of offsets flooding the market pushing the price of offsets down and making it easier for companies to just offset their emissions rather than investing in capital to reduce their emissions. The purpose of carbon credits is supposed to be costly enough to spur action to reduce emissions in the first place.