Do you think farmers might be paid for increasing soil Organic Matter?

holwellcourtfarm

Member
Livestock Farmer
Simply ban offsetting throughout the economy.

Ban advertising of alleged ‘offsetting’.

Companies would then trade on an equal footing of audits for carbon emissions.
Governments know that they would then fail their targets. They have no idea how to actually decarbonise the economy in the timescales they have committed to achieving "net zero" carbon emissions.
 

holwellcourtfarm

Member
Livestock Farmer
From BBC News 'Scotland' page:

Fresh bid to capture emissions from Peterhead power station
By Kevin Keane
BBC Scotland's environment correspondent

Carbon capture and storage technology will be installed at a rebuilt gas-fired power station at Peterhead by 2026, SSE Thermal has said.
The energy company has agreed a deal with Norwegian firm Equinor to capture 1.5m tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) annually and store it under the North Sea.
Peterhead is the last power station in Scotland to run off fossil fuels.
Some environmentalists have criticised the carbon capture technology.
They fear it gives big companies a licence to continue burning fossil fuels instead of phasing them out.
But Peterhead was Scotland's most polluting site in 2018 after problems at the Hunterston nuclear power station in Ayrshire caused demand for electricity from gas to rise significantly.
SSE has been attempting to install carbon capture technology at Peterhead power station since 2006 but no scheme has come to fruition so far.
Equinor is the Norwegian state-owned multinational energy firm.
SSE Thermal's managing director Stephen Wheeler said: "Through cutting-edge carbon capture technology, we can decarbonise this vital flexible power generation, as well as heavy industry and other hard-to-reach-sectors of the economy, which will be crucial in Scotland transitioning to a net zero future."


Carbon capture and storage takes CO2 emissions from industrial processes and turns them into liquid which can then be injected into rocks.
Depleted oil and gas fields under the North Sea are ideal locations for storing the carbon.
The technology is a vital part of the calculations made by government advisors on how our greenhouse gas emissions can be reduced to "net-zero" by 2045 in Scotland and 2050 for the whole UK.
Difficult history
But previous efforts to develop it have repeatedly failed.
An initial £500m venture with BP to create "the world's first CCS power plant" was scrapped after a year because of government delays over support.
A similar plan was revived in 2011 in a partnership with Shell which would have seen the CO2 sent to its Goldeneye field.
It was down to the final two - along with the White Rose scheme in North Yorkshire - of a UK government competition to stimulate investment in the technology worth £1bn.
But the competition was cancelled in 2015 after £100m had been spent on it.

Previous attempts to use the technology at the now closed Longannet coal-fired power station in Fife were also cancelled.
'CCS is not vital to meet net-zero'
Chris Stark, chief executive of the Climate Change Committee,said: "I think it's very likely to happen this time around and the reason for that is because ministers at UK and Scottish level have been very clear that they want to see carbon capture technology developed."
But Jess Cowell, from Friends of the Earth Scotland, said: "CCS is not vital to meet net-zero if we have the right policies in place to decarbonise.
"If we're going to pursue net-zero what we need to see is just a managed phase out of high polluting fossil fuels."
 

ajd132

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Suffolk
I cannot fathom why farmers are arguing against potential lucrative markets for sequestering carbon for those that can’t do it, it’s mental.
 

holwellcourtfarm

Member
Livestock Farmer
I cannot fathom why farmers are arguing against potential lucrative markets for sequestering carbon for those that can’t do it, it’s mental.
I think offsetting comes with a high risk of allowing people to escape facing our emissions and changing our lives to remove them. If fossil carbon emissions do not dramatically reduce then avoiding atmospheric temperature changes that would be very hard to live with will be impossible, unless society does actually manage to get engineered carbon capture and secure storage working on a very large scale. The link I posted above shows over £600M spent so far over 8 years on just the one power station site still hasn't managed to do that.

Having said all that I'd be a fool not to take available offset money if our own business is offered it.

A moral conundrum.

Governments genuinely don't know what to do about this.

South Australia has shown that huge progress can be made in decarbonising society if the will is there. I now understand the leading thinkers who've said for some time that once enough renewable power installations are on line electricity can become incredibly cheap thus allowing things currently unthinkable to become realistic.
 

Brisel

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Midlands
I cannot fathom why farmers are arguing against potential lucrative markets for sequestering carbon for those that can’t do it, it’s mental.

Have you done any carbon accounting on your patch? Your system should be pretty good & will be a selling point if you wish to expand in future.

I'm still nervous of jumping into selling carbon that I might need to balance my own books later on. I can't see my plough/deep tillage system being very good anyway. My carbon gains are all outside the crops in new hedges, conservation pastures & woodland.

Mrs Brisel now works in the Natural Capital sector - there is so much too be quantified but it will happen. The demand for offsetting is so great that there will be a lot of development here very quickly.
 

ajd132

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Suffolk
Have you done any carbon accounting on your patch? Your system should be pretty good & will be a selling point if you wish to expand in future.

I'm still nervous of jumping into selling carbon that I might need to balance my own books later on. I can't see my plough/deep tillage system being very good anyway. My carbon gains are all outside the crops in new hedges, conservation pastures & woodland.

Mrs Brisel now works in the Natural Capital sector - there is so much too be quantified but it will happen. The demand for offsetting is so great that there will be a lot of development here very quickly.
Yes working with gentle farming and the compdicarbon platform, it’s ISO acreddited. Worth a look.
 

E_B

Member
Location
Norfolk
Am holding back on persuing potential carbon trading until I know whether it is compatable with ELMS or not. Also a precedent needs to be set in terms of additionality and entitlement to uplift once signed up with brokers.
 

ajd132

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Suffolk
Am holding back on persuing potential carbon trading until I know whether it is compatable with ELMS or not. Also a precedent needs to be set in terms of additionality and entitlement to uplift once signed up with brokers.
Don’t think it will be an issue but get your point. Elms is supposed to be ‘public goods’, carbon trading needs to remain a private market
 

SFI - What % were you taking out of production?

  • 0 %

    Votes: 80 42.3%
  • Up to 25%

    Votes: 66 34.9%
  • 25-50%

    Votes: 30 15.9%
  • 50-75%

    Votes: 3 1.6%
  • 75-100%

    Votes: 3 1.6%
  • 100% I’ve had enough of farming!

    Votes: 7 3.7%

Red Tractor drops launch of green farming scheme amid anger from farmers

  • 1,292
  • 1
As reported in Independent


quote: “Red Tractor has confirmed it is dropping plans to launch its green farming assurance standard in April“

read the TFF thread here: https://thefarmingforum.co.uk/index.php?threads/gfc-was-to-go-ahead-now-not-going-ahead.405234/
Top