ACCU Savanna Fire Management

This is a new issue of newsletter from Deloitte Tohmatsu Sustainacraft.

Methodology Updates is a series covering carbon and biodiversity credit methodologies. This article examines Australian Carbon Credit Unit Scheme's (ACCU) Savanna Fire Management methodology that was updated this year, an operational framework that is heavily referenced by new emerging voluntary methodologies.

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Author: Nick Lau (Applied Scientist)

Summary

Australia updated its savanna fire management framework under the ACCU Scheme in 2026. This article focuses on the methodology that credits both emissions avoidance and sequestration, treating them as two pathways within the same fire-management project: reductions in methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O) from savanna fires, and carbon dioxide (CO2) removed from the atmosphere as additional carbon is stored in living biomass and dead organic matter.

The accounting begins with the fire regime rather than with a prescribed carbon value for carrying out an early-season burn. Project performance is assessed against a 20-year historical baseline, while mapped vegetation and annual fire history are processed through SavCAM (Savanna Carbon Accounting Model), which automates the underlying FullCAM (Full Carbon Accounting Model, Australia's national carbon accounting model) simulations and the methodology's accounting calculations.

The sequestration pathway is particularly distinctive because modeled carbon-stock gains are not all recognized immediately. Part is held in a sequestration bank and released over time, later stock losses are carried forward, and a separate buffer addresses permanence risk. Australian savanna fire accounting is also influencing methodologies now under development at Verra and Isometric, although both voluntary standards are adapting the approach with their own baseline, monitoring and durability rules to cater towards a wider geographic applicability.

Savanna fire management methods | Clean Energy Regulator

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1. Savanna Fire Management under the ACCU Methodology

1.1 What is ACCU?

The Australian Carbon Credit Unit (ACCU) Scheme is Australia’s principal domestic carbon-crediting framework, administered by the Clean Energy Regulator. Eligible land-sector, industrial and other abatement projects can generate one ACCU for each tonne of CO₂-equivalent emissions reduced or removed. ACCUs are tradeable units that can be purchased and cancelled voluntarily, acquired by the Australian Government through carbon-abatement contracts, or surrendered for regulatory compliance.

Its project-crediting role is broadly comparable to Japan’s J-Credit Scheme, which certifies domestic emissions reductions and removals from activities such as energy efficiency and forest management. A key difference is that ACCUs are more directly integrated into compliance demand through the Safeguard Mechanism, Australia’s emissions-control framework for large industrial facilities. Facilities that exceed their prescribed emissions baselines can surrender ACCUs to help meet legally binding obligations. The ACCU market therefore links voluntary project development with government procurement and industrial compliance demand, broadly analogous to how domestic crediting mechanisms are becoming more relevant alongside Japan’s GX-ETS, although the two market architectures are not directly equivalent.

At Deloitte Tohmatsu Sustainacraft, we work with global partners involved in ACCU project development and have experience in carbon project development, monitoring and geospatial MRV. If this methodology is relevant to your activities, or you are considering participation in the ACCU market, please get in touch to discuss potential collaboration

1.2 Fire Management Across the Dry Season

Across northern Australian savannas, fire behavior changes markedly over the dry season. Planned fires earlier in the season are generally cooler and easier to control than late dry-season fires, when vegetation is drier and fire can spread rapidly across continuous fuel. When used strategically, patchy burns create a mosaic of burnt and unburnt areas that can interrupt fuel continuity and limit the spread of subsequent wildfire.

The ACCU methodology does not reduce this to a simple “early burning equals crediting” rule. Planned burning is required in each project area each calendar year, but the amount, ignition technique and spatial pattern can respond to local conditions. Ground and aerial ignition are permitted, and late dry-season burning may still be used for containment or suppression. Crediting depends on the resulting change in fire emissions and landscape carbon relative to the baseline.

Changes in fire timing, extent and connectivity affect both combustion and vegetation. Less extensive or severe burning can reduce methane and nitrous oxide released by fire, while lower biomass mortality can allow more carbon to remain or accumulate in the landscape. These effects lead to two separate carbon-accounting pathways: emissions avoidance and carbon sequestration.

1.3 Two Carbon Pathways: Emissions Avoidance and Carbon Sequestration

The emissions avoidance pathway quantifies reductions in CH4 and N2O from savanna fire. The sequestration pathway accounts for CO2 removed from the atmosphere when additional carbon is stored in living biomass and dead organic matter. Both arise from fire management, but one is an avoided annual emissions flow while the other is a carbon stock that remains exposed to future fire, mortality and decomposition.

Projects must also satisfy ACCU additionality requirements adapted to savanna fire management. Among other conditions, the project area cannot already be subject to a legal requirement to manage fire primarily for reducing fire emissions or sequestering carbon. New projects generally have a 25-year crediting period, while sequestration projects separately elect a 25- or 100-year permanence period; transferred projects can be subject to modified crediting-period rules.

With the overall framework established, the following sections trace how the methodology turns changes in fire management into credited abatement, and we focus on the critical components that shape this accounting process. The discussion moves from the historical counterfactual and spatial accounting inputs, through the SavCAM/FullCAM modelling workflow, to the separate treatment of emissions avoidance and carbon sequestration, before considering how the Australian approach is being adapted in emerging voluntary methodologies.

2. Historical Baseline and Counterfactual

Rainfall, drought, fuel accumulation, the previous season's burned area and operational constraints can all produce large year-to-year changes in savanna fire. A single pre-project year would therefore be a weak counterfactual. For a new project, the ACCU methodology generally uses the 20 calendar years immediately preceding the crediting period as the baseline, drawing on the project's own historical fire regime rather than a 'no fire' scenario or a hypothetical future management plan. The longer baseline is also a practical update enabled by the availability of historical fire-scar data extending back to 1988.

Averaging across that period reduces the influence of exceptional high- or low-fire years and captures repeated cycles of burning, fuel accumulation and recovery. The baseline remains fixed, however, so project-period performance is assessed against historical project-area conditions rather than a contemporaneous control that changes with regional fire conditions.

The same 20-year period establishes two reference quantities used later in the accounting: mean annual baseline fire emissions for the emissions-avoidance pathway and mean baseline carbon stock for sequestration. Project-year fire emissions are compared with the first value, while sequestration begins from the second and then follows subsequent changes in modeled carbon stock through time.

3. Spatial Inputs and Carbon Modelling

3.1 Vegetation Fuel Types and Annual Fire History

Project areas must fall within the prescribed high- and/or low-rainfall zones and contain eligible Vegetation Fuel Types (VFTs). The proponent prepares a VFT map for the project area, while annual fire-history data record where burning occurred and prescribed spatial season boundaries determine whether fire is classified as early or late dry season.

VFTs characterize savanna vegetation using attributes such as structural formation, canopy height, foliage projected cover, dominant vegetation stratum and grass type. The assigned class determines which calibrated vegetation and fuel dynamics are applied when the carbon model is run for an eligible pixel, so VFT mapping affects both eligibility and quantification.

Fire history supplies the changing annual disturbance pattern. The early/late dry-season boundary is not a single fixed date across northern Australia; classification depends on location and date. Spatial fire data are therefore used directly in reconstructing the fire regime that is passed into the accounting workflow.

3.2 Automating the Accounting Workflow with SavCAM

SavCAM (Savanna Carbon Accounting Model) is the mandatory project-level accounting tool that automates data aggregation with carbon modelling. Proponents provide the required project information and VFT map, and SavCAM performs the GIS processing and calculations needed to produce annual net abatement for each project area. Rather than using a standalone carbon model separately and then importing the result, SavCAM integrates FullCAM within this workflow.