Carbon farming piggery trades ACCUs

Environmental trader Greenbank Environmental has announced the first successful trade of Australian carbon credit units (ACCUs) created by a piggery under the Carbon Farming Initiative (CFI). The CFI allows farmers to earn carbon credits for cutting greenhouse gases, then sell these to businesses wishing to offset their emissions.

Greenbank Chief Executive Fiona O’Hehir said she was “happy as a pig in mud to make carbon farming history”. She noted the benefits of carbon farming, saying it will “reduce the farm’s power bills, cut greenhouse emissions from methane and create ongoing revenue streams for these hardworking farmers”.

The trade comes almost eight months after the official launch of the carbon farming piggery at Blantyre Farms in Young, NSW, owned by Edwina and Michael Beveridge. It is the first Australian piggery to turn manure into ACCUs, capturing the methane of its 22,000 pigs at the point of release and turning it into renewable electricity using an on-farm biogas generator.

Not only does this destroy the methane - a gas with 20 times the heat-trapping potency of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere - but it creates enough clean energy to power the entire property. Heat from the generator is also used to keep the baby piglets warm in their sheds.

Furthermore, the resulting ACCUs, which have been sold to Greenbank, create an income stream for the farmers to assist with their return on investment for the biogas generator. It is expected to pay for itself in three years, according to Edwina Beveridge.

O’Hehir is keen to work with more farmers and project developers to create innovative new projects, taking advantage of the CFI.

“My aim is to establish Greenbank as one of Australia’s largest facilitators of low carbon projects, encouraging projects through design, build, financing, operation and trading of environmental certificates,” she said.