While the rest of the carbon world was caught up with debates about whether Verra's REDD+ offsets were "worthless", and the drama involving South Pole's Project Kariba, Australia's carbon credit system was facing a crisis of its own. 

Carbon offsets produced under Australian government standards are known as ACCUs, or Australian Carbon Credit Units.

In March 2022,  Professor Andrew Macintosh, the former head of the Emissions Reduction Assurance Committee (ERAC), which approves ACCUs, described the government's forest regeneration scheme (known as Human Induced Regeneration, or HIR) as a "fraud". 

Shortly after this podcast was recorded, Professor Macintosh and a group of researchers released a paper showing that HIR projects had limited regeneration in areas issuing ACCUs, and compared to baseline areas outside the crediting zone, HIR projects were non-additional. 

Read the Guardian article on the paper for more: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/mar/27/australias-carbon-credits-system-a-failure-on-global-scale-study-finds 

In this podcast, I chat with Guy Dickinson, the founder of Betacarbon, Clima, and Gondwana. These are a trio of companies that tokenize ACCUs, provide carbon advisory services, and develop carbon credit projects respectively. 

Whistleblowing is tough, and so is developing a carbon market that’s built upon science that’s constantly evolving. 

Dickinson says that there’s going to be a crunch in ACCU supply as the ERAC tightens its criteria for new projects. He also chats about upcoming regulatory developments in Australia, thoughts about Professor Macintosh, and getting transparency and access to the Aussie carbon market via the BCAU token. 

Read the highlights on Medium: https://medium.com/@shihan.fang/australia-accu-hir-betacarbon-d1801e7d45fc

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