Queensland’s First CarbonSmart Assessor – Paul Daly from SEQ Catchments

MEET Queensland’s first CarbonSmart assessor.

Paul Daly has been appointed by South East Queensland Catchments and Landcare, so property owners can find out just how much their land is worth as a carbon sink. He will estimate and register carbon sinks, which are plantings conducted on private land since 1990.

Mr Daly, a farm forestry extension officer, examines the size, age and condition of a forest and rates it according to a formula.
If sold to a carbon emitter, the landholder receives 60 per cent of returns; 10 per cent is put aside in an insurance pool in case fire or disease destroys the trees; and the remainder goes to management, assessment and trading costs.

Mr Daly said yesterday the southeast was a prime place for carbon trading because its eucalypt species had strong growth rates. Sub-tropical eucalypts grew far more quickly than southern species, making them of greater value in a carbon-trading scheme.
An average hectare of southeast eucalypt country could store between 10 tonnes and 20 tonnes of carbon. Currently this was trading at $20 a tonne. “But what grows at Kin Kin and Bellthorpe (Sunshine Coast hinterland) is different to what grows in the Lockyer (drier country southwestof Brisbane) and has different storage levels,” he said.

Mr Daly said the project would deliver an income stream to owners of land not being used for agriculture.“It also delivers the inherent benefits of revegetation, including stock and crop protection, improvement of erosion and soil salinity problems and invigorated biodiversity, all of which promotes greater productivity on the land,” he said.

Landcare’s role was the creation of a not-for-profit carbon pool called Carbonsmart which handled trading. It started in southern states last year. Carbon credits were sold from the carbon pool to people who wanted to offset their carbon-producing activities, such as an electricity producer. The scheme provided a financial incentive for landholders to maintain eligible carbon credit vegetation on their land for 100 years. Landholders receive annual payments and if the price of carbon rises, so do payments.

Carbonsmart managing director Matthew Reddy said his organisation had traded more than $1 million in contracts since starting in March last year.

It is estimated carbon trading worldwide will be worth more than $3 trillion by 2020.