Australia's Human-Induced Regeneration Scheme — Satellite Evidence Exposes a Carbon-Credit Integrity Gap

Human-Induced Regeneration (HIR) is a crediting method under Australia's Emissions Reduction Fund / Australian Carbon Credit Unit (ACCU) scheme: landholders are paid for carbon removed as native forest regenerates on land where regrowth was supposedly suppressed by grazing or land management. By 2024 HIR projects had been issued close to 44 million ACCUs, making it the largest nature-based removal offset type in the world by credit volume.

In 2024, Australian National University researchers (Macintosh et al., published in The Rangeland Journal) used national Landsat-based woody-cover datasets to compare 182 credited HIR project areas — about 30% of all ACCUs issued and roughly AUD 300 million in taxpayer-funded credit value — against matched, uncredited comparison land. They found that changes in canopy cover inside project boundaries closely tracked the fluctuations in the comparison areas, meaning the observed 'regeneration' was consistent with rainfall-driven natural variability rather than the projects' management actions. Many credited areas had little evidence of ever having carried forest cover suitable for regeneration.

The finding directly contradicted a government-commissioned review led by former Chief Scientist Ian Chubb (2023) and a subsequent Clean Energy Regulator statement (December 2023) asserting the method was 'sound' and administered under a 'robust regulatory framework'. The dispute continued into 2025, with industry-aligned researchers publishing a reply in Communications Earth & Environment arguing the national-scale satellite dataset underestimated recovery, and Macintosh's team defending their original method in response.

The case is included here as a cautionary, governance-focused example: it demonstrates both the risk of large-scale carbon-crediting programmes being credited for outcomes that satellite evidence cannot substantiate, and the transferable value of independent, national-scale satellite verification in surfacing and publicly litigating that risk — even against push-back from the credit-issuing regulator itself.

Read the full analysis: https://www.publish.csiro.au/RJ/RJ24024