The Clean Energy Regulator (CER) held the
seventh Emissions Reduction Fund (ERF) auction on
6 and 7 June 2018. At the auction, the CER contracted a further
6.67 million tonnes of abatement in 32 transactions.
With the eighth ERF auction announced for 10 and 11 December
2018 and only $250 million in funding remaining (from the $2.5
billion committed to the ERF) the question is, where to from
here?
While it was hoped that the auctions would attract bids from big
industrial polluters with projects to curb their emissions, that
interest does not appear to have eventuated. Instead, 29 of the 32
transactions in the most recent auction were for vegetation
projects. Of the 739 ERF projects registered at 31 August 2018, 402
were for vegetation projects with 189 registered in New South Wales
and 141 in Queensland. These figures show the ERF is primarily
being utilised by landowners for vegetation projects (such as human
induced regeneration of native forests and avoided
