Funding to develop lower-cost solutions for measuring soil organic carbon stocks

The grant opportunity gives research and commercialisation organisations up to $20 million to develop lower-cost, accurate technological solutions for measuring soil organic carbon stocks. This delivers on the Technology Investment Roadmap’s stretch goal to lower the cost of accurate soil carbon measurement, by 90%, to $3 per hectare per year.

The purpose of this grant opportunity is to meet the Technology Investment Roadmap’s economic stretch goal to reduce the cost of soil carbon measurement to less than $3 per hectare per year.

The grants support proof of concept, validation or early stage commercialisation activities relating to the development of lower-cost, accurate technological solutions for soil carbon measurement.

Successful applicants will demonstrate how their proposed technology solution is effective at measuring, estimating and/or predicting soil organic carbon in an operational environment.

Measurements of soil carbon stocks taken to validate and determine the accuracy of the technologies will need be provided to the Department of Industry, Science, Energy and Resources for inclusion in a national soils database.

The objectives of the grant opportunity are to:

• fast-track the development and commercial readiness of low-cost and accurate technology solutions to measure and estimate soil carbon stocks, to a standard that could support participation in the Emissions Reduction Fund
• validate and demonstrate the effectiveness of technology solutions under Australian operational environments
• engage and collaborate with landholders to ensure technology solutions can be used in a cost-effective way within diverse farm management operations
• leverage co-investment to develop, validate and demonstrate the technology solutions.