Charon Point Carbon Project

Charon Point Carbon Project is a soil carbon project located in the Banana local government area of Central Queensland, approximately 50km northwest of Moura and 120km southwest of Rockhampton. It was registered in April 2015 and currently covers 1996.38 ha.

Soil carbon projects, specifically those operating under the Estimation of Soil Organic Carbon Sequestration using Measurement and Models methodology, involve changing agricultural management practices to increase the amount of carbon stored in the soil. Standard requirements include taking baseline soil core measurements to establish existing carbon levels, implementing new eligible land management activities, and performing subsequent measurements or modeling to verify sequestration.

The Central Queensland area around Banana Shire is well known for extensive beef cattle grazing and broadacre cropping operations. The region's environment is considered semi-arid to sub-tropical with summer-dominant rainfall, and the soils are generally fertile brigalow clays and vertosols common to the Fitzroy Basin.

This project was established to increase carbon in the agricultural soil system by altering the stocking rate, duration, or intensity of grazing to promote soil vegetation cover and improve soil health. To support this, the project also involves applying nutrients in the form of synthetic or non-synthetic fertilisers to address material deficiencies, and re-establishing pasture by seeding or pasture cropping.

Interestingly, the project has evolved alongside Australia's carbon market, updating its methodology several times. It transitioned from the 2014 grazing systems method to the 2018 measurement method, before finally settling on the 2021 determination. It was also initially contracted under a Carbon Abatement Contract (CAC614503) in April 2015, but is no longer associated with it following a series of project area variations. The project is managed by Coolum Pastoral Pty Ltd and Corporate Carbon Solutions Pty Ltd, with Carbon Link Operations Pty Ltd acting as the agent.