Forest Carbon CoOp

Forest Carbon CoOp (also known as the Australian Forest CoOp Project) is a Plantation Forestry project comprised of multiple aggregated sites across Victoria and Tasmania. The project was registered in April 2020 and currently covers a combined area of 342.28 hectares. Because it is an aggregated project, it spans several distinct locations, including sites approximately 15km west of Huonville and near Ulverstone in Tasmania, as well as areas near Beaufort and Wangaratta in Victoria. The regional land use across these areas is heavily characterized by commercial forestry operations, interspersed with cattle and sheep grazing. Given the geographic spread, the environmental conditions vary but generally feature moderate to high rainfall classifications, which are ideal for timber growth. The soil types range from fertile basalt-derived ferrosols in the Tasmanian sites to clay loams and texture-contrast chromosols in the Victorian regions.

Plantation Forestry projects under the 2017 Determination generate Australian Carbon Credit Units (ACCUs) by establishing new plantations, converting existing short-rotation plantations to long-rotation forests, or maintaining pre-existing plantations. Standard requirements dictate that the forest must be managed for commercial timber, meaning trees must be planted at appropriate commercial stocking densities, and carbon sequestration must be accurately accounted for in both the standing trees and the ultimately harvested wood products.

The project sequesters carbon through a mix of establishing new plantations and converting existing short-rotation forests into long-rotation systems. According to the project proponent, WeAct Pty Ltd, the project specifically utilizes pine plantations to capture carbon while building a resilient forestry industry for regional Australia. Over its operational life, the project has undergone several variations to add and remove land areas, which is standard practice for optimizing commercial harvest rotations. Notably, carbon credits generated by the Forest Carbon CoOp have been heavily utilized by various organizations for their net-zero targets, including the Mount Alexander Shire Council, which has retired credits from this project to offset its municipal emissions.