Written by:
Future Group
12 August 2024
There’s an old joke we share around here at Future Group that carbon offsetting feels a bit like buying flowers after you’ve cheated.
While we at Future Group are always working to drive down emissions, we can’t yet eliminate all the emissions from our business activities, like powering our tech and necessary staff travel. We choose to offset the carbon emissions that we can’t avoid, to make us a carbon-neutral business. In principle this makes sense: we pay someone else to remove this CO2 from the air.
But the carbon credit industry – commonly thought of as ‘planting trees to make up for polluting’ – is complex. We aim to offset our emissions using the highest quality carbon credits we can find, and we also want to be transparent about what our offsetting work looks like.
Future Group is committed to a fossil fuel-free future, and we firmly believe that carbon offsetting should only be used as a last resort. To build a sustainable world we know there needs to be genuine, systemic change, with new technologies and industries, so that we don’t have the problem of ongoing emissions from legacy, dirty industries. Offsets don’t help solve that problem.
While we invest in those exciting advances as we move forward, we’re still stuck with the problem of the emissions of our suppliers today – what we call operational emissions. We’ve been making changes where we can, but the reality is that there’s still a lot of exciting innovation ahead of us all before Future Group can be fully carbon neutral without offsetting.
We’ve been certified carbon neutral by Climate Active since 2019, and have continually reduced our emissions per staff member ever since. Altogether, we’ve driven down our own emissions intensity per staff member by 90% as part of Future Group’s carbon neutral program.
Purchasing offsets for the remaining operational emissions means that Future Group’s operations have zero climate impact. But we are careful – and transparent – about how we do this.
Carbon offsetting is a mechanism by which customers pay money to schemes that promise to take as much carbon out of the atmosphere as the customer has put in. The units sold are carbon credits, each equivalent to one tonne of carbon. They can be bought by individuals, governments or companies; increasingly by climate polluters. Buying carbon credits compensates for their emissions because the place they bought it off is going to undo the damage for them. That’s the theory, anyway.
Usually, the scheme involves the reforestation or restoration of land, both of which naturally absorb carbon so it’s not floating around in the atmosphere, where it drives climate change.
Offsetting can even be applied to avoided deforestation – not cutting down some trees that already exist and are just happily growing as they always have. Unless the trees were set for clearance, the credit becomes a promise to keep things are they are, though only for an agreed amount of time. If you think it’s beginning to sound pretty sketchy, you’re not alone.
When airline customers book a flight, for example, they’re invited to offset their emissions from it. This means they pay a set amount to buy carbon credits from a scheme that promises to reduce carbon emissions equivalent to those released by the passenger’s journey. The customer feels better about flying, and it helps the airline’s reputation, too. But, here comes the ‘but’.
Firstly, offsetting doesn’t address the problem. That airline will still continue to fill the atmosphere with carbon at the same rate, when we know that emissions need to drop sharply to keep the planet below 1.5°C. Offsetting alone is not going to get us to net zero within the carbon budget.
Some of the planet’s worst polluters use carbon credits to ‘offset’ their impact on the planet. A coal mine that pays to offset its emissions is still driving fossil fuel use, and under current government policy can keep opening more coal mines and release more and more emissions while buying more carbon credits.
A group of more than 80 organisations recently signed a letter stating that offsets only delay action and should not be used to meet emission reduction targets – because they don’t reduce emissions. The group – which included NGOs, finance industry bodies and nonprofits – argue that offsetting gives polluters permission to continue, and should be removed from climate transition planning.
Secondly, not all carbon offset schemes are created equal. Demand for carbon credits is huge – it’s big business. As excess carbon is a global problem (spreading through the atmosphere), all sort of projects have sprung up globally to meet demand, which can be difficult to regulate. Companies can buy carbon credits from overseas offset projects in good faith, but have no way of knowing for sure that the promise is being kept.
Even here in Australia, the system is flawed, with different levels of project integrity, and different ways of reporting that have allowed some projects to sell credits for trees that are already there. Meanwhile, offset investment has tripled while renewable energy investment has stalled.
All emissions from Future Group’s operations have been offset with Australian Carbon Credit Units (ACCUs). We work to find the best possible quality ACCUs and engage directly with the schemes to see them in action.
“The rules aren’t perfect,” concedes Navi Mangalvedhekar, Future Group’s Senior Impact Analyst. “But we’re trying to improve them day by day.
“There are serious concerns about the integrity of most global carbon credits. But, nature-based carbon sequestration, when done right, is vital if we want to cap global warming at 1.5 degrees. We want carbon projects to lead towards tangible real-world outcomes for the climate, environment, and communities. We need to restore carbon sinks on land and ocean. Not every carbon project does that, or does it well, so we have to find the best ones we can using a standardised methodology.”
“We buy ACCUs” adds Sustainability Manager Steve James, “because we think they are still more rigorous than many others. We focus on human-induced regeneration ACCUs, with long permanence periods, ideally 100 years, and allow oversight for transparency.
“We don’t buy overseas carbon credits because they have less regulation or oversight. They’re about a tenth of the price – but we choose to invest in transparency.”
Transparency sounds good… so let’s go see our carbon credits in action.
In a fork between the Darling and Warrego Rivers in Kurnu-Baakandji country, grey floodplain soil runs into the soft red earth of the Australian rangelands, dotted with bloodwood, mulga and coolabah trees. Brolgas, ibis and pelicans appear after the rains to fish the shallows of the spreading rivers, as cattle browse the greening tussocks. Under the custodianship of the Maroulis family the land is getting a new lease of life, while helping Future Group offset our operational carbon.
Bordering north-western NSW’s Toorale National Park, this is the Delta Human Induced Regeneration project, a 20,407-hectare certified carbon offset project. owned and managed by family-run sustainable agriculture business Nunyara on a 100-year permanency.
A hundred years is a long timeframe for us mere mortals to get our heads around, but if we want to protect landscapes and lock away carbon in the long-term, that’s the sort of timeframe we need to be thinking about. This once-degraded rangeland landscape will continue to flourish – and draw carbon out of the atmosphere – for generations to come.
The land here had been overgrazed, with a higher density of sheep and other livestock than it could sustain. So in 2015 it was registered as a Human Induced Regeneration (HIR) project, which means new active land management practices are introduced that lock away carbon by letting nature flourish. Taking over the practice in 2023, Nunyara enhanced these practices further to build a thriving, diverse landscape to lock away more carbon.
Being next to Toorale National Park definitely helps, too. Native species need to be able to move through the landscape to access food, shelter and genetic diversity, so having a conservation area next door enhances the work being done at Delta.
Delta’s biodiversity boost doesn’t mean a sudden influx of koalas. Improvements can be quite subtle, as the carbon is locked away in native plants, and in the tiny organisms that live in healthy soil, such as fungi and bacteria.
Scientists are able to measure carbon sequestration by complex mapping and modelling, combined with fieldwork where they take soil samples and calculate how much carbon vegetation is storing. There’s a lot of interest in the role of fungi in carbon storage, and Nunyara are working with researchers to explore its potential. Delta also has two clean freshwater lakes full of aquatic wildlife and birds including brolgas, honeyeaters and endangered Australian bitterns.
Nunyara, a Barngarla word meaning ‘restore to health’, has three goals: ecosystem regeneration, improving production and supporting vibrant communities.
Production is supported by a regenerative cattle enterprise. HIR targets require the vegetation targets of 20% cover above 2 metres, so the cattle must remain at low density (below 50% of rated capacity), with feral goats monitored and removed.
Nunyara’s owner, Phoebe Maroulis, says: “On Delta, we see a positive difference with the cattle-only approach. To be fair, you can always find evidence for what you’re trying to show, so we ensure that we monitor extensively at set points and document our findings on a scale to create a consistent record over time.”
Fencing now keeps feral goats out, and cattle are regularly rotated through the paddocks to preserve diverse ground cover and protect vulnerable plant species. The cattle operation also supports local jobs.
Which brings us to Nunyara’s vital third pillar: supporting local communities.
With good staff hard to find, Nunyara use their strong connection to the local community, working with indigenous employment agencies, the local council and high schools to identify potential team members and develop skills and support them into various roles.
Nunyara also runs a work experience project that invites disengaged young urban people out to live the rangelands life. “We link them up to more opportunities and experiences that support youth wellbeing,” Phoebe explains. Nunyara also supports Moorambilla Voices, a cultural music and arts program (click here for its awesome video!).
So we have learned that by managing the land to promote natural biomass, Delta generates high-quality ACCUs that take Future Group to 100% Carbon Neutral status – but it’s also doing so much more for communities and the local environment.
Carbon offsetting is a small part of our story as we travel the road to net zero, but we’re committed to being transparent about it, while doing everything possible to drive systemic change. Our Carbon Advisory Board is working with key stakeholders across government, academia, regulators and the superannuation industry to take us beyond Carbon Neutral, to forge a path to achieving net zero.
And by spending time researching the best-quality Australian carbon credits and engaging with the people who work on these offsetting projects, we can at least be sure that the benefits extend beyond just offsetting our operational emissions, and into the ecosystems and communities around them.
Carbon offsetting: The process of buying carbon credits to compensate for CO2 emissions.
Carbon credit: A tradable financial asset purchased to offset carbon emissions.
Australian Carbon Credit Units (ACCUs): Credits issued by the Australian government to be bought and sold in the offsetting process.
Permanence period: Under the ACCU scheme, all area-based projects either have 25-year or 100-year permanence - that's how long the project promises to store the carbon for.
Human induced regeneration: Managing land in a way that returns it to its natural state. Land managers work to keep land free of invasive flora and fauna, or keep livestock at sustainable levels, so that the land can regenerate to become a self-sustaining, biodiversity-rich landscape closer to what nature intended. These landscapes store more carbon than overgrazed land, mainly because plants and animals are left to fulfil their lifecycles. Living plants absorb and store CO2 and wildlife also plays a role in carbon storage. When plants and animals die and decay this carbon is released into the soil, which remains the largest carbon sink on land. Harvesting crops and livestock interrupts this lifecycle.
