“When CarbonLink came on board, they took a fresh look at the project and identified opportunities that had been missed. Their technical expertise transformed the project's outlook and created significant additional value.”
Chatsworth House is a mixed grazing enterprise in Victoria’s Western District, producing beef, lamb and wool. Since purchasing the property in 2020, Tom and Sarah Whinney have focused on improving soil health, productivity and resilience through regenerative land management.
The soil carbon project was registered with another provider in 2021. By mid-2025, as the project approached its first reporting milestone, technical and compliance challenges had created uncertainty about whether it would generate a meaningful carbon outcome.
After the project transferred to CarbonLink, a comprehensive technical review identified opportunities to strengthen the project design, improve compliance confidence and maximise its carbon returns. What began as a project with limited crediting prospects was redesigned into a compliant, ACCU-generating carbon asset.
The primary eligible activity implemented across
the project was: Applying nutrients to address
material deficiencies.
The project’s land management strategy (LMS)
centred on improving soil fertility through the
application of compost and other nutrient inputs
to address identified soil deficiencies and support
increased biological activity.
Supporting practices included: Lime application
to address soil acidity, pasture renovation and
re-seeding, enhanced grazing management and
stocking strategies, and ongoing regenerative
land management practices.
As existing RCS clients undertaking the Executive
Link programme, the Whinney family were
already applying principles focused on improving
ecosystem function, groundcover and landscape
resilience.
“By improving the sampling strategy, refining the CEA and optimising emissions calculations, we transformed the project’s outlook and saw significant additional value for the landholder.”
Increasing soil organic carbon, improving soil fertility and building greater resilience were already important priorities for Sarah & Tom Whinney at Chatsworth House. Establishing a soil carbon project provided an opportunity to capitalise on these existing goals, while creating an additional source of value from the regenerative management practices being implemented across the property.
The soil carbon project aims to:
With CarbonLink taking over the project, a key additional objective became unlocking the project’s unrealised value through improved project design and technical optimisation.
CarbonLink’s role extended well beyond regulatory compliance. Following the transfer of the project from the alternate soil carbon aggregator, CarbonLink undertook a comprehensive technical review of sampling design, carbon estimation areas, baseline assumptions and emissions methodologies to ensure the project could achieve its full potential under the Soil Carbon Method.
CarbonLink worked with Tom and Sarah Whinney to address constraints in the original project design. By optimising sampling, project carbon estimation area and improving emissions calculations, the project went from being unlikely to generate credits to producing 18,864 ACCUs across its first reporting period – equivalent to 2.07 ACCUs per hectare per year.
The work Tom and Sarah Whinney have put into soil health and land management at Chatsworth House has delivered a measurable increase in soil carbon. Over the project’s first five years, soil testing measured a 10,127 tonne increase in soil carbon across the project area. This was equal to 25,152 tonnes of CO₂-e stored in the soil and resulted in 18,864 Australian Carbon Credit Units, or ACCUs.
These results provide an additional return from the improvements being made across the property. They also show what can be achieved when practical land management is supported by careful measurement and a soil carbon project designed around the property.
Outcomes of the Chatsworth House Soil Carbon Project demonstrate the importance of project design, compliance
expertise and ongoing technical management in maximising soil carbon performance. For Chatsworth House, CarbonLink didn’t simply manage an existing project. The team re-engineered the project framework to unlock significant additional value while maintaining compliance with evolving soil carbon methodology requirements.
