LOOC-C: digital services for carbon farming markets

To enable farmers to participate profitably in greenhouse gas mitigation and maximise the benefits to the land from carbon markets

Can you imagine carbon markets not only supporting Australia in addressing climate change but also boosting livelihoods and leading to great environmental outcomes? Australia’s carbon markets could help farmers achieve best management practices, steward the land and supplement farm incomes. Individually, Australia’s 140,000 farmers are small but collectively results could be large.

A typical farming enterprise does have opportunities to manage or increase vegetation, boost soil carbon, avoid methane and nitrogen emissions, and improve energy efficiency. Together, these farm carbon opportunities have huge abatement potential for Australia.

Making decisions about carbon farming

Despite strong interest in carbon markets and the Government’s Emissions Reduction Fund and Carbon Farming Initiative, uncertainty about risk versus value, transactional costs and lack of trust are a deal breaker for most commercial farmers.

With tools to make informed decisions, lower market barriers and a way to reduce transaction costs, carbon farming could become a significant component of Australia’s overall emissions reduction efforts into the future.

At Digiscape, to help make this happen, we engaged with users using human centred design and pushed the envelope in developing useful decision tools. LOOC-C (‘Look-see’) is a tool that has been thoroughly user tested and is considered fit for purpose and ‘best of breed’ for useability.

Our first software tool that helps the land sector realise their abatement potential

LOOC-C is a software tool that allows land managers to quickly assess the GHG abatement options for a specific land area, including estimates of abatement quantity such as Australian Carbon Credit Units. By supporting an assessment of specific paddocks or farm areas, LOOC-C helps producers discover and evaluate their options for participating in a project through the Emissions Reduction Fund and other markets. You can access LOOC-C now at looc-c.farm.

How LOOC-C works

Using paddock location and user-provided land use and land management information, LOOC-C estimates GHG abatement via an emission factor database and GHG emission models (e.g. FullCam). The result is a list of eligible carbon project types and estimates of Australian Carbon Credit Units that a project may generate.

The estimate is refined in a more detailed assessment using additional information and can be used to assess options and potential outcomes of a carbon project.

Check out LOOC-C today

You can access and use the LOOC-C tool at looc.farm. The current version of LOOC-C helps users by:

• helping determine which carbon farming methods they can participate in under the Australian Government’s Carbon Solutions Fund (CSF)
• giving a prediction of Australian Carbon Credit Units (ACCU’s) that can be attained by participation in carbon farming activities
• representing possible co-benefits and dis-benefits associated with carbon farming projects
• providing a clear sense of what next steps are required to apply for a CSF recognised carbon project.

Upcoming features being added to LOOC-C include:

• support for additional carbon farming programs outside of the CSF
• additional carbon methods
• additional usability improvements.

Where can I find out more information about LOOC-C?

You can read a media release on the latest release of LOOC-C here.

Watch team members David Evans and Anila Butt present on some of the science behind LOOC-C.

Watch the demo video:

As of April 2023, LOOC-C includes Plantation and Farm Forestry methods to help Victorian landowners. Read more and this and the launch of the Victorian Government’s carbon farming program.

Read more about our work in carbon farming

Co-benefits and greenhouse gas abatement

Recognising and valuing carbon co-benefits

Why renting, rather than buying, carbon might help mitigate climate change

A human-centred design approach linking farmers to options in the ERF

Evolving Australian carbon markets

Butt A, Car N, Fitch P (2020) Towards ontology driven provenance in scientific workflow engine. In ‘8^th International Conference on Model-Driven Engineering and Software Development (MODELSWARD 2020)’, Valletta, Malta, 25-27 February 2020. doi:10.5220/0008963701050115

Stitzlein C, Mooji M (2019) Design for discovery: helping Australian farmers explore their options in a government sustainability program through user centred design. pp 1173-1177 in ‘Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual Meeting 2019’. doi:10.1177/1071181319631312

Some of the LOOC-C team