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CarbonCopy Q2 2026 - Land transitions, the LUC 6 ballot, and new MPI fees

  • Writer: Rebecca Hunink
    Rebecca Hunink
  • 7 days ago
  • 6 min read

Updated: 24 hours ago

Editorial: Zero click land use transition opportunities

Catchment-scale map showing erosion risk and land transition opportunity areas across farm boundaries

We're really excited about our latest addition to the CarbonCrop platform - zero-click analysis of land transition opportunities. There are a huge number of farms in New Zealand that could benefit from their existing regenerating native forest, native transition of high erosion risk areas, and agroforestry on medium risk areas. To a large degree these opportunities are unknown.


Why unknown? Because it's complicated, and it takes time to explore.


There are going to be a lot of people walking the rows of Fieldays this week trying to evaluate hundreds of different opportunities. The first step is often the hardest - with so many things requesting your time and attention, how do you put your scarce capacity into the right ones, and avoid missing out on opportunities.


The same thing is true at a national level - we have some big challenges, and we need to put the most effort behind the opportunities that have the potential for greatest impact... but how do we tell? Advocates of every opportunity say they could have a big impact, but by the time the details emerge we're potentially years down the road, with all the opportunity cost of the unexplored paths lost to the past (to say nothing of the real costs of the explored paths that might end up being underwhelming).


At CarbonCrop we've been working on improving this with automation for years - helping landholders understand their existing vegetation cover, carbon revenue opportunities with the ETS, indigenous forest biodiversity metrics, ongoing carbon removals and potential supply chain opportunities. We've registered many hundreds of farmers in the ETS ourselves, giving them tens of millions of dollars for native forest restoration activities. In the process we've built a platform which we've made available to others to accelerate this work - other providers now manage more land on our platform than we do ourselves.


With the new offering, snappily termed 'Land transition opportunity analysis'*, we now bring these same capabilities to assessing potential planting options. The initial focus is on space plantings for moderate risk slopes, and native retirement for the highest risk (and least productive) areas. Zero-clicks, out of the box assessment of extent, focus areas, implementation costs, revenue streams, opportunity costs, providing landholders and advisors an immediate first-look of the scale of the potential, so they can decide where it should sit on those neverending to-do lists. As part of the CarbonCrop platform, you also have everything you need to turn the plan into action.


Request your analysis and find out more, here.


Skip ahead to the second step of transition planning, and decide where it needs to sit on your list.


*(we'll come up with a better name, promise - though I'm not sure we can top 'Feeling LUCky?' for our forest LUC assessments. Get one on our website if you still haven't!)



Policy and Regulatory Updates: The LUC 6 ballot opens in two weeks, and updated MPI fees


The LUC 6 ballot: dates are confirmed

The first LUC class 6 land ballot opens on 19th June and closes 22nd July.


The ballot is how you get a permit to register exotic forest planted after October 2025 on Land Use Capability (LUC) class 6 land without using other exemptions or your 25% farm allowance. There are 7,500 hectares available nationally in this first draw, with 2,000 of those reserved for smaller applications of 100 hectares or under.


You apply through Tupu-ake, MPI's online ETS system. The permit is issued to you for your selected title(s) and can't be transferred. Getting one doesn't guarantee registration - all the standard eligibility criteria still apply - but without one, you would have to explore other exemption pathways.


What you need to prepare and how to apply: Enter the ballot for LUC class 6 land permits.


Tip: If you're not sure how much of your planned planting sits on LUC 6 land, get a free CarbonCrop LUC Assessment at carboncrop.com/ets-luc-assessment now.

MPI ETS fees: the numbers have changed

Two fee changes affecting most participants.


The annual charge per hectare of registered forest drops from $14.90 to $10.28 from the next 2026-2027 financial year. For a 500-hectare registered area, that's a saving of around $2,300 a year. Invoices are expected to be sent in August 2026.


From January 2027, entering the LUC 6 ballot will cost $66.92 - entry to the two ballots this year is free.


The full schedule of changes is on the MPI consultation page.



emsTradePoint Market Update

emsTradePoint graph showing quantity of NZUs traded and price of units traded in NZ ETS. Second graph showing the average price.

Carbon Market Overview

  • The New Zealand carbon price has made a steady recovery over the last 3 months, having rallied from $39.00 to the current price of $53.50. We saw strong compliance buying over April and May, but the price has struggled to

    push higher on the back of a steady supply of sellers, with many of our

    smaller sellers keen to sell, ‘Cash is King’ and they have more pressing needs

    than holding units.

  • In April, the Climate Change Commission provided their advice to

    Government, they noted that instead of the current surplus of units

    overhanging the market we could see an undersupply of units as early as

    2028. The recent release of ‘Privately Held Units’ for May 2026 (post 2026

    surrender by emitters) saw a drop of nearly 25.5 min units from Apr-2026.

    (Privately held units | EPA)


Regulatory update


NZU Auctions

  • The auctions continue to be a non-event, no bids in March and the same for

    the June auction, all available units will be rolled over for the next auction on

    8th September 2026. Of note is the NZX/EEX partnership for running the

    auctions on behalf of the Government has now finished and the September

    2026 auction will be run by CBL Markets (Australia) Pty who have been

    appointed through to 31 st December 2030.


International Carbon Markets

  • EU carbon prices have traded in a 72 Euro – 79 Euro range over the last 3

    months, currently sitting at the top end of that range.

  • Australian units (ACCU’s) at $37.75 AUD ($46.00 NZD).



Platform Updates: See your whole portfolio in one layer

Managing forest across multiple properties means doing the same thing over and over. You find a layer that matters - LUC boundaries, catchment outlines, regional erosion risk - and you upload it to one site. Then you move to the next property and do it again.


Company Layers, shipped in May, means you only do that once. Upload a GIS layer at the company level and it appears across all your site maps. Your catchment boundaries, your LUC data, whatever you need to see consistently across a portfolio - it's just there, whichever property you're working on. You can version it, restore previous versions if something's been overwritten.


Catchment coordinators managing a dozen or more farms will feel it most - the kind of work that used to take an afternoon now just doesn't need doing.


CarbonCrop platform showing the Company Layers panel with Global Layers and a custom Hawke's Bay Landslide Susceptibility layer



Things You Might Have Missed

From CarbonCrop


External



Important Dates

  • 19 June 2026 - First LUC class 6 ballot opens. 7,500 hectares available nationally, 2,000 reserved for applications under 100ha. Free to enter in 2026. Read more.

  • 30 June 2026 - Final Emissions Return (FER) deadline for all ETS participants - covers the 2023-2025 mandatory emissions return period (MERP). Mandatory. Read more.

  • 22 July 2026 - First LUC class 6 ballot closes. If you're relying on this pathway, this is your deadline. Read more.



Conference Recap: Agricultural and Climate Change Conference

At last month's Agriculture and Climate Change Conference, Cameron Bagrie was plain-spoken: global inflation settling at 4-5%, margins tight, short-termism compounding right across the economy. In that environment, the long game is hard to play.


Leann Palmer from BNZ has been running quintile analysis on farm performance. The gap between the top farms and the average is widening, not closing.


One of the farmer panellists made a passing comment: mixed messages and misinformation make it easy to do nothing.


Open questions remain on how to close an adoption gap that doesn't seem to be technical, and who pays for change - the farmer, the customer?



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