Howson Carbon Project 14

Howson Carbon Project 14 is a soil carbon project located in the Banana Shire in Queensland, approximately 30km northeast of Theodore. It was registered in March 2022 and covers a project area of 328.89 hectares.

Under the 2021 Estimation of Soil Organic Carbon Sequestration using Measurement and Models method, projects like this generate Australian Carbon Credit Units (ACCUs) by increasing the amount of carbon stored in agricultural soils. This methodology requires proponents to physically measure carbon changes through baseline and subsequent soil coring, alongside implementing new eligible management activities to build soil health.

The Banana Shire region is predominantly used for beef cattle grazing, broadacre cropping, and mining. The area experiences a semi-arid climate with a medium, summer-dominant rainfall averaging around 670–730mm annually. Soils in this part of the Brigalow Belt are typically deep, highly-fertile cracking clays (vertosols), red clays, and loamy soils.

To build soil carbon, Howson Carbon Project 14 focuses on re-establishing and rejuvenating pastures through seeding and pasture cropping, while also altering the stocking rate, duration, and intensity of grazing to improve vegetation cover. Managed by Agriprove, a major Australian soil carbon developer, the project successfully measured soil sequestration baselines across multiple carbon estimation areas between April 2022 and May 2023. As a result of its carbon sequestration efforts, the project has been successfully issued 5,623 ACCUs to date.