Technology helps developers find their perfect biodiversity credit match

Introducing Niche’s Biodiversity Offset Exchange

Under the NSW Biodiversity Offset Scheme (BOS), offset rules require project developers to compensate for any unavoidable impacts by ensuring an appropriate degree of biodiversity protection. Developers may purchase credits from Biodiversity Stewardship Sites to offset their obligations, provided these satisfy a complex set of trading rules, designed to ensure biodiversity values are being conserved.

However complex rules and lack of access to information about available credits can make it challenging for developers to find the right credits for their project.

Amanda Griffith, Manager – Natural Capital and Offset Markets, explains Niche’s technology solution that helps developers meet their biodiversity obligation more efficiently.

A better way to find credits for projects

After more than a decade navigating the biodiversity credits market on behalf of Niche’s clients, we understood the challenges firsthand. We knew there needed to be a better way for developers needing credits to connect with landholders who had credits or wanted to establish biodiversity stewardship projects.

That led us to develop our credit-matching platform, the Biodiversity Offset Exchange (BOE). Today the BOE database contains:

• over 1 million biodiversity credits
• from over 200 registered and potential stewardship sites across NSW
• covering more than 75 threatened species
• and 250 ecosystem types.

It not only accesses and analyses credits contained within the existing credit registers but uniquely allows for review and search for credits on landholdings that have potential to be developed as offset sites.

For developers with a short-term need to buy credits or those with a strategic approach in mind, BOE is a unique resource to help them find exactly what they need. For a developer with a tight project timeline, the ability to streamline credit procurement can significantly reduce project risk and costs.

BOE is also benefitting landholders by helping them find buyers for their credits and earn income from their projects sooner.

Harnessing technology to speed up credit matching

The heart of BOE is a comprehensive database of credits and spatial information related to development and offset sites. This combines Niche’s own credit portfolio and our proprietary data on potential stewardship sites, with the public credit databases maintained by NSW Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water (DCCEEW).

For credits to satisfy a project’s biodiversity offset obligation, they must meet a complex combination of requirements including species type, geographic location, nature of plant community, features such as presence of hollow bearing trees and degree of vulnerability.

Searching and matching offsets manually across the whole market to satisfy all requirements for a given project, can be a time-consuming process and open to human error. For projects requiring many different types of credits, the inefficiencies with this approach are clear.

BOE’s unique credit matching algorithm draws on spatial data, Niche’s ecology knowledge and BOS trading rules to automate this process. It can check thousands of credit combinations show accurate matches on demand.

Tapping into potential credits

In areas with significant infrastructure development occurring, such as the Renewable Energy Zones across NSW, demand is high for credits which creates even more complexity for developers.

BOE goes a step further from showing existing biodiversity credits to also capturing potential credits—that is those that could be generated by a landholder’s property should there be interest from a project developer.

This allows us to capture expressions of interest from landholders and present these options to developers, which significantly increases the potential pool of credits and means developers can find potential credit options before they are on the market, and in some cases, before they are even formally created.

This is helping overcome a previous limitation on available credits, since landholders may be unable to commit the costs of developing a site without a clear prospect of return. Currently BOE has about 40 potential offset sites listed, ready to be linked to a developer.

As an example, the BOE recently matched two prospective offset sites with a large renewable project. The project proponents were able to secure more than 5,000 credits in advance. The landholders were then confident to proceed with developing the offset sites. That match will enable an area of over 2,500 ha to go into conservation almost immediately.

Simplifying compliance and unlocking opportunities

BOE’s powerful matching capability and broad view of the existing and potential market gives developers confidence they have access to their best credit options.

It also means developers have time to consider some of the more strategic options for meeting a biodiversity obligation—from partnering with the interested landholders already identified by Niche in BOE, through to engaging other local landholders or even establishing their own biodiversity projects.

BOE is part of a suite of services and systems that our Natural Capital team has developed to support developer and landholder clients in the biodiversity offset and emerging nature markets.

Get in touch

With BOE, Niche is helping developers find their perfect biodiversity credit solution, increasing market transparency and driving positive outcomes for nature.

If your project needs biodiversity credits, talk to us today about your requirements.

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