Alternative waste treatment method

An alternative waste treatment project involves activities to change waste into products and create recyclable resources.

Waste that can be made into products can include compost, fuel or biogas. Recyclable resources can include plastics, glass and metals.

Your eligible solid waste must be processed at a purpose-built facility. This can:

• be a new facility
• expand on an existing facility if 24-month records of historic waste process activity are available
• involve a facility that's transitioning from a previous Carbon Farming Initiative project.

Your facility must also use eligible waste treatment technology to process the waste. This can happen with:

• a process engineered fuel manufacturer
• an enclosed composting facility, as open windows are permitted only as a final step to mature the compost product
• an anaerobic digester that collects the resulting biogas and sends it to a combustion device, such as a flare, boiler or internal combustion engine.

Relevant legislation

• Sections 9 to 13 of the method

7 years.

While projects are credited for activities within the 7-year crediting period, the ACCUs are issued over a longer period of usually 13 years. This additional period is an extended accounting period

Relevant legislation

• Par​​t 5 of the Act
• Section 19 of the method

Abatement is calculated by subtracting the amount of emissions produced during your project from the baseline amount of emissions.

Your baseline amount is the amount of emissions that would occur if your project didn't run.

Factors that can affect calculating abatement include:

• organic contents of the waste
• amounts and type of organic material
• amounts of fuel and electricity used to run the project
• emissions the waste would generate as it breaks down in landfill
• emissions produced by composting or anaerobic digestion.

Projects under this method have an extended accounting period, therefore you:

• don't need to calculate any further activity abatement portions during this period
• calculate net abatement using the previous activity abatement portions that accrue over time.

ACCUs continue to accrue after the 7-year crediting period.

Activity abatement portions

We use activity abatement portions. These are the amount of abatement in a reporting period, divided by 7.

Of those 7 portions, one is used to calculate the net abatement amount for the reporting period. The other 6 portions accrue over 6 reporting periods and are included in relevant reporting periods.

Your first offsets report contains one activity abatement portion, which is one-seventh of emissions reduced from that reporting period.

Your second offsets report contains 2 portions:

• one from the current reporting period
• one accrued from the previous reporting period.

Your third offsets report contains 3 portions:

• one from the current reporting period
• 2 accrued from the previous 2 reporting periods.

This process repeats itself for each reporting period after.

Relevant legislation

• Section 7A, section 69 of the Act
• Section 6 of the rule
• Part 4 of the method

You must monitor:

• parameters used in the calculation of net abatement that require monitoring
• specifications for the procedure and frequency of monitoring
• details on how to derive the parameter value based on the measurements and monitoring data.

You must also remember general monitoring requirements outlined in the Act.

Relevant legislation

• Part 17 of the Act
• Sections 45 and 46 of the method

You must keep records on:

• amounts of each type of waste received and processed
• amounts of electricity, compost or other products produced
• amounts of fuel and electricity used to run the project
• volumes and methane contents of biogas sent to combustion devices.

You must remember to meet general record-keeping requirements in the Act and the rule.

Relevant legislation

• Part 17 of the Act
• Part 17 of the rule
• Section 45 of the method

You must report any time that your project doesn't meet monitoring requirements under the NGER Measurement.

This includes if your project ran under different versions of the NGER Measurement.

If this is applicable, you must include:

• which versions of the NGER Measurement you used
• reasoning as to why you didn't switch to the latest version of the NGER Measurement
• the period of time in which your project ran under a previous NGER Measurement.

You must remember to also meet general reporting requirements in the Act and the rule.

Relevant legislation

• Part 6 of the Act
• Part 6 of the rule
• Section 43 of the method

We provide you with an audit schedule when your project's declared.

You must provide audit reports according to this schedule.

We schedule at least 3 audits. Extra audits can be triggered.

For more information, refer to our audit information.

Relevant legislation

• Part 19 of the Act
• Part 6 of the rule