The Minister for Energy and Emissions Reduction has announced new priority Emissions Reduction Fund (ERF) methods for development by the Clean Energy Regulator in 2022.
The ERF incentivises Australian businesses to cut the amount of greenhouse gases they create and to undertake activities that store or avoid carbon emissions. ERF methods set out the rules that projects must follow to estimate emissions reductions and ensure genuine carbon abatement.
The 5 new priority methods are:
- Carbon capture use and storage (CCUS), including for the production of industrial materials
- Transport, including crediting electric vehicle charging infrastructure and fuel displacement in heavy vehicles in industries such as mining
- Hydrogen, including injection of clean hydrogen into the gas network, and the use of hydrogen in electricity generation or other uses, such as low carbon steel
- Integrated farm method, including allowing separate ERF land-based activities to be combined or ‘stacked’ on the same land
- Savanna fire management, building on the existing method with updated carbon accounting and by expanding the carbon pools and vegetation types covered.
We sought input from the public over 5 weeks and received over 70 submissions on ideas.
In reviewing these ideas and setting the priorities, the Minister considered factors like:
- potential uptake
- likely volume of abatement
- degree of certainty and acceptable costs of estimating emissions reduction
- whether the ideas had supporting technology and research to be ready for method development over the next 12 months.
The Australian Government will closely monitor developing technologies for future method development as the technology and evidence base evolves. This may include biomethane from agricultural waste, livestock feed technologies and direct air capture.
