Frequently asked questions

A Nature Market (or Environmental Market) is an online marketplace where landholders in a particular area can offer to supply nature-based projects on their land and third parties can bid for the rights to the environmental services delivered by these projects.

Nature-based projects are projects that deliver environmental services, such as creating wetlands, planting new woodlands, and the reversion of arable farmland to grassland.

Environmental Services include biodiversity and water quality improvements, natural flood management, carbon sequestration and other outcomes delivered by nature-based projects. Multiple environmental services can be delivered by a single project, for example, a wetland may deliver biodiversity improvements and also reduce nitrogen and phosphorus flows into rivers and streams.

Environmental credits are the property rights to a standard quantity of an environmental service deemed to be delivered by a registered nature-based project under a relevant standard. An example of an environmental credit is a biodiversity unit delivered by a grassland project and quantified using the statutory biodiversity metric.

The standards used to quantify the environmental services delivered by different types of nature-based projects are approved by the Environmental Markets Board. Environmental credits will be issued by the market operator once it has verified that a project has been delivered to the agreed project specifications.

EnTrade’s markets are open to Project Suppliers and Environmental Credit Buyers.

Project suppliers are landholders who are willing to deliver and maintain nature-based projects on their land.

Environmental Credit Buyers are organisations that have a regulatory requirement or voluntary commitment to environmental improvement.

A market operator is an organisation that establishes and operates an environmental market.

They undertake the activities associated with the operation of a market, including:

• managing the registration of participants, projects and environmental credit requirements
• certifying projects for the environmental services that will be delivered
• managing the bids and offers and the matching process
• entering into agreements with participants to manage the delivery of projects and the allocation of environmental credits

EnTrade is the market operator for these nature markets.

The types of projects that are eligible may vary for individual markets. 

Learn more about the types of projects that are eligible. 

Landholders can participate within a live market if they are willing to:

• agree a contract with the market operator to deliver a nature-based project to the required project specification (Nature-based Project Agreement)
• enter into a legally binding agreement with the local planning authority (Landholder Agreement) covering the future use and management of the project land
• demonstrate that they have legal ownership of the project land or control of that land for the duration of the Landholder Agreement.

Local eligibility criteria may apply. To find out more, please visit the nature market webpage for your area.

When determining the offer amount for a project, Project Suppliers will need to take into account the costs associated with establishing the Project.

The payment you will receive for a nature-based project will depend on the Offer you make to supply the project, and whether the amount businesses are willing to pay for the environmental credits from the project is sufficient to match your Offer and cover the Market Operator Fees.

The payment will also depend on the type, scale and location of the project and the duration of the Landowner Agreement.

If your offer is matched, you will receive your offer price, plus the  bonus for your share of the any surplus from the trade.

The amount you will need to pay for environmental credits will depend on the supply of nature-based projects and the offers made by project suppliers.

If your bid is sufficient to match the offers made by project suppliers and the market operator fee, you will pay your bid price minus the discount for your share of the surplus from the trade. 

The EnTrade team is available to discuss how your environmental goals could be met through our markets.

We will work with you to understand the environmental benefits that you need to deliver and how this translates into environmental credits.

The amount you bid for credits is entirely up to you and will depend on what you are aiming to achieve and the budget you have available.

Because it is a competitive market, the EnTrade team cannot provide you with specific guidance on how much to bid.

The Market Settlement Reports from previous market rounds and the market opportunities statement published before each market round provide useful information that can be used by buyers before bids are submitted.

A bid should be the maximum amount a buyer is willing to pay to meet their credit requirement

There is no minimum credit requirement, and a buyer can register a credit requirement of any quantity.

To be successful in the market a bid will need to cover the cost of:

• the supplier payments to deliver the nature-based projects that generate credits
• the ongoing payments for land use and maintenance, fixed in advance by EnTrade
• EnTrade’s fees for running the market
• EnTrade’s other fees including payments for monitoring.

Information about the ongoing payments for land use and maintenance and EnTrade’s fees are published in the market opportunities statement for each market round.

A successful buyer will never pay more than their bid.

A buyer may pay less than their bid if there is a surplus from the trades in the market round. Buyers will receive their share of any surplus in the form of a discount on their bid.

Buyers whose bids are too low to meet supplier payments, EnTrade fees and other costs will be unsuccessful in the market round.