One carbon credit represents one tonne of carbon dioxide stored or avoided. These can be sold to the federal government under its $4.55 billion Emissions Reduction Fund , or auctioned off to companies that want to reduce their emissions on paper by offsetting their own emissions with the purchased carbon credits.
One farmer was given around one million carbon credits for preserving 23,000 acres of forest at the ACCU price of $16, at the time worth around $16 million.