Synergy Reforestation Project

Synergy Reforestation Project is a farm forestry permanent planting project located across multiple agricultural sites in the Wheatbelt, Great Southern, and Esperance regions, spanning vast areas east and southeast of Perth in Western Australia. It was registered in December 2014 and covers an aggregated area of 6,699.87 hectares.

Measurement Based Methods for New Farm Forestry Plantations involve establishing permanent plantings or commercial plantations on land that was previously used for agricultural purposes. To meet standard scheme requirements, these projects must establish trees at a stocking density and arrangement that will eventually achieve forest cover, typically defined as reaching at least two meters in height and a 20% crown cover. Unlike methodologies that rely strictly on predictive computer modeling (such as FullCAM), measurement-based methods determine carbon abatement by conducting physical, on-ground measurements of the trees over time.

The widespread project sites fall predominantly within regions known for extensive dryland agriculture, including broadacre cropping (such as wheat and canola) and sheep grazing. The region is characterized by a Mediterranean to semi-arid climate, receiving low to moderate winter-dominant rainfall. The soils across these diverse agricultural landscapes are varied but commonly feature sandy loams, gravelly laterites, and duplex soils consisting of sand over clay.

This project involves the permanent planting of several native Eucalyptus species, including River Red Gum (Eucalyptus camaldulensis), Sugar Gum (Eucalyptus cladocalyx), and various dry-country oil mallees (Eucalyptus kochii, Eucalyptus loxophleba, and Eucalyptus polybractea). The project is managed by Western Australia's largest electricity generator, Synergy (officially the Electricity Generation and Retail Corporation), with the WA Forest Products Commission acting as an agent. An interesting administrative event occurred in June 2017 when the proponent successfully requested to transition the project from a 100-year to a 25-year permanence period, which required the formal relinquishment of 18,999 ACCUs to the Clean Energy Regulator. Furthermore, in February 2020, the project varied its underlying methodology, shifting from an older Reforestation and Afforestation determination to its current measurement-based approach.