To participate in the Emissions Reduction Fund you will need to register your project. Participation in the Emissions Reduction Fund is open to individuals, sole traders, companies, local, state and territory government bodies and trusts. You will also need to supply a forward abatement estimate​.​​

There are four parts to applying to participate in the Emissions Reduction Fund:

Online application to register your project

This includes:

• Information about you, so that we can be sure of your identity and assess you against the Fit and Proper Person test requirements
• A Forward Abatement Estimate covering the crediting period for your project. This will be:
  • 25 years for savanna fire management projects
  • 15 years for avoided deforestation projects
  • 25 years for all other sequestration projects and
  • 7 years for all other emissions reduction projects.
  Note that this is not necessarily the same as the contract period for a carbon abatement contract.
• A question about your legal right to conduct the project.

Fit and Proper Person status

If you have not already had your identity confirmed and been assessed against the Fit and Proper Person requirements you will need to complete and submit the necessary AFP National Police Check form.

If you are involved with other schemes or activities administered by the Clean Energy Regulator, you may have already met the identification procedures and passed the Fit and Proper Person test. Fit and Proper Person criteria now includes work health and safety. ​However, if you have been assessed against the fit and proper person test as part of a previous application and your circumstances have changed you must notify the Clean Energy Regulator.

The fit and proper person test also now includes a focus on capability and competency.

Carbon Service Providers and the Fit and Proper Person test

This guidance explains the minimum fit and proper person status expectation for Project Proponents who are Carbon Service Providers (CSPs).

Open an ANREU account

If you do not already have an ANREU account you will need to apply to open an account. This does not have to be done at the time you apply to register your project, but it will need to be done for you to receive any Australian Carbon Credit Units (ACCUs) generated by your ERF project. You must have applied to open an ANREU account by the time of your first project report. You will not be able to receive ACCUs without an ANREU account.

Eligible interest holder consent

If you are applying to register an area-based emissions avoidance project or a sequestration project under the Emissions Reduction Fund, you must submit signed eligible interest holder consent forms from all persons or organisations that have a specific legal interest in the land on which your project will run.

This ​can be done at the time you apply to register your project, or later. If it is not done at the time your project is registered, it will receive conditional registration only. You will be required to obtain signed eligible interest holder consent forms before submitting your first project report. Failure to do so may result in the project owner not receiving Australian carbon credit units (ACCUs).

Request for suppression of project area from the Emissions Reduction Fund Register

Details about each registered Emissions Reductions Fund project is published in the Emissions Reduction Fund Register.

If a project is an area-based project, the information published includes the project area. Under certain circumstances, you may request that your project area is not published in the register.

Requests for suppression of information are assessed taking into account the need for transparency and accountability in relation to the use of public funds. The Clean Energy Regulator must be satisfied that publication of your area information could substantially prejudice your commercial interests and that this outweighs the public interest in publishing the information.

The information required in a request for project area information to be suppressed from the Register, is outlined in the application form available on the Apply for participate forms and resources page.

What happens next?

We will assess your application and if you are successful we will register your project. As part of our assessment, we must be satisfied that:

• you are who you claim to be
• your project meets all eligibility criteria of the Act
• is consistent with an applicable method, and
• you are a fit and proper person—a fit and proper person has no prior convictions or history of non-compliance under a range of laws.

When a decision has been made by the Clean Energy Regulator, you​ will be notified of the outcome. If a decision has been made to register your project, its details will be published on the Emissions Reduction Fund project register. The register lists information about each project registered under the Emissions Reduction Fund including the number of Australian carbon credit units (ACCUs) issued.