Regen Advisor - Masterclass

This week-long training is perfect for people that wish to assist farmers register a CER project. The focus is on the Soil Carbon and Plantings methods, but many of the lessons will apply to other methods and future methods (IFLM).

Goal: At the completion of the course you will be able to register an ACCU Scheme project, and talk to landowners about the process, and make sure they do due diligence before starting.

Who is your teacher?: Christophe Bur has a background in engineering and management consultancy and this skill set has enabled him to embark on a successful career as a "cattle and carbon farmer". On his own farm he has 3 successful CER-registered and LRF projects. He has also advised many other farmers through the self-proponent process across many methods. He has professional status with Accounting for Nature, the Land Restoration Fund, Climate Active and the Victorian Carbon Farming Program. At Regen Farmers Mutual Christophe has guided us through our first transactions in the Traprock (QLD). Christophe is a Regen Farmers Mutual Members Council Member since inception and is a Director of Regen Digital (the data platform used by Regen Farmers Mutual).

Agenda:

Please note that Monday is a 2.5hr session (6:30 - 9pm), the rest of the week (Tues - Fri) is 1hr15m (7:45 - 9pm) sessions.

Monday: Session 1 – Register a project. 2.5hrs

• Structure of a CER application (login, CIA, project, variations, ANREU, including specifically when registering for RFM, the due diligence phase vs doing the actual registration)
• Client portal vs Online services
• Before starting – thoroughly check eligibility with proponent. What they will and will not be able to do.
• Additionality and newness
• How to access client registration, CIA for proponent: must reflect title ownership otherwise legal rights assignments. Partnerships don’t work, trusts
• Common documents required for CIA and for projects (mapping, NRM stuff, legal titles, legal rights, police check, FPP, registration)
• Method-specific documents (calibration choice for EMP, LMS for SOC, permanence plan EMP + AC) – same page as above
• Must-read list (CFI Act, CFI Rules, CFI mapping guidelines, Methods, Sampling guidance, FullCAM guides)
• For EMP: what is a calibration, difference between pilot and full method
• For SOC: the LMS, the ‘activities’, baseline data !!!
• Mapping concepts: Project area, CEAs. Limits on CEAs. Mapping formats (CRS, attributes); useful layers links (QLD and other states) vegetation regulation, soils, forest layer
• Data for registration trial

Tuesday: Session 2 - FullCAM use for EMP.

FullCAM is necessary even if not planning to do a planting project since it is pretty generic for everything forest-based (and will be used for IFLM) - so will be the same concepts.

Using the ‘FullCAM guides…’

Wednesday: Session 3 – Organising sampling for SOC (optional if not doing a soil carbon project immediately.

• Order of things (if tick the ‘sampling before declaration or not)
• Sampling plan – the random seed process (how to get the seed number to the second and timezone questions)
• Stratification (requirements from the sampling doc about strata sizes and composite samples etc). Number of sampling points depending on CEA size.
• Importance of stratification for crediting
• Sampling points generation (and reserves), communication to CER pre-sampling
• Sampler’s instruction and sampling protocol, location accuracy requirements

Thursday: Session 4 – Basic economics of ACCU Scheme projects,

• Key $ flows: ACCUs, admin costs, projects costs. DIY vs aggregation through RFM vs CSP
• Abatement calcs per method, permanence discount, offset reports
• Admin costs (monitoring, reporting, claiming ACCUs, audits)
• Project costs per method. Cash costs and time costs
• Putting it together: accus flow and cash flow – EMP example

Friday: Session 5 – Q&A after the first attempt at registering a project, plus answering FAQ from landowners

FAQs from landowners (common and per method).
Future methods.
Execution of a project (monitoring and reporting)
Q&A