Find the answers to all your questions about the Sales Dashboard.
Disclaimer
Credit sales prices are in accordance with the Biodiversity Offsets Scheme (BOS) public registers. The prices reflect historical data and may not be indicative of current or future market prices. Market participants should seek independent advice and use sound judgement in interpreting the data and its application to valuing credits. The Department aims to provide information current according to published date.
The Biodiversity Credits Market Sales Dashboard (the Sales Dashboard) is a searchable tool that allows users to view historical sales and market trends.
The Sales Dashboard contains data relating to all biodiversity credits created since 25 August 2017 using the Biodiversity Assessment Method (BAM) under the Biodiversity Conservation Act 2016 and registered in the BOS public registers.
Users can search for ecosystem, species credits, Offset Trading Group (OTG), Plant Community Type ID (PCTID) or BioMetric Vegetation Type ID (BVT ID), and can filter searches by Interim Biogeographic Regionalisation for Australia (IBRA) subregion and species. The Sales Dashboard will display prices based on the selected search criteria to help support:
The Sales Dashboard only includes information about historical trades. The Sales Dashboard does not have a predictive element and does not forecast or estimate future prices for biodiversity credits.
The Sales Dashboard is not intended to replace the existing Biodiversity Offsets Payment Calculator if it is removed from public view but will provide an additional source of information that may be useful to consider when estimating credit prices.
Yes, improvements will be made to respond to stakeholder feedback where possible. To help us decide which improvements are most needed, please fill out the survey on page 5 of the Sales Dashboard.
The Biodiversity Credits Market Sales Dashboard (the Sales Dashboard) and the BioBanking Credits Sales Dashboard are both web-based tools that provide biodiversity credit market data held in the BOS public register. The tools provide data for credits based on the two separate underlying methodologies. The Sales Dashboard contains information about Biodiversity Assessment Method (BAM) credits based on data from the BOS public register, while the BioBanking Credit Sales Dashboard contains information about BioBanking Assessment Methodology (BBAM) credits based on data from the BioBanking public registers.
The Sales Dashboard does not include credit equivalences (from BBAM to BAM credits).
Offset Trading Groups (OTGs) are groups of biodiversity credits that share similar biodiversity values. They define how ecosystem credits can be used to offset impacts on a like-for-like basis in combination with the offset rules. For more information on OTGs, refer to the Plant Community Type (PCT) to OTG lookup tool and the more detailed answer in the definitions section.
The Sales Dashboard only provides data for BAM credits that have already been traded and registered in the BOS transactions register. Some credits have not yet been traded. This is because most trades have centred around impacts from specific areas of development (such as Central West and Western Sydney). For information on how to price untraded credits, refer to the Credit Pricing Guide.
The sales information in the Sales Dashboard may not reflect a typical price discovery process because:
As is the case in most markets, credit prices will vary according to the demand relative to the supply at the time of sale.
Yes, on pages 2 and 3 you may search for a particular PCT ID, the OTG the PCT belongs to or the corresponding BioMetric Vegetation Type ID (BVT ID) using the dropdown box. For more information on credit types, please visit our What are biodiversity credits? webpage or contact the BOS Help Desk. For more detailed information on BioNet Vegetation Classification, including classification of PCTs, please visit our About BioNet vegetation classification webpage.
The Sales Dashboard includes data relating to all BAM credits that have been traded, including related party trades, 'self-trades' and bulk trades. These trades may impact market prices. Users of the Sales Dashboard should be aware of this.
Credits may be traded in bulk transactions and so may not be individually priced. In this situation, a bundle of different OTGs and species credits is sold for a fixed price and the total value of the sale is averaged across all credit types. It is important to know if this has occurred, as credit prices from that transaction may not reflect the typical market value of a specific credit.
You can find out if a bulk trade has occurred by checking the BOS transactions register. If multiple trades share the same date, IBRA subregion and transaction ID – and have the same price per credit – this indicates that the total value of the sale may have been averaged across all OTGs and species credits.
The current version of the Sales Dashboard does not specify if data relates to credits retired for the Total Fund Deposit value only.
Prices from credits bought by reverse auction are displayed as transactions but the Sales Dashboard does not specify if transactions were the result of reverse auctions. This is because while retiring credits is a biodiversity market transaction, it is usually not a priced transaction. Because of this, this information is not included in the Sales Dashboard. Information on retired credits can be found in the BOS transactions register.
The Sales Dashboard does not indicate whether a credit was retired under the variation rules. This is because the Sales Dashboard reflects transactions recorded in the BOS transactions register, which does not currently indicate if variation rules have been applied.
No, the Sales Dashboard sources data for both Threatened Ecological Communities (TECs) and non-TECs from the BOS public registers.
By clicking on the 'average price over time' graph on page 2 the number of sales and number of credits for the selected OTG or species can be displayed. You can also access this data using the BOS transactions register.
On the market overview page (page 1), selecting the biodiversity type (ecosystem or species) will display the number of credits transferred by IBRA subregion and by Offset Trading Group (OTG) in separate graphs. The IBRA subregion can be selected individually on the graph or using the drop-down menu to show the sales data for that selection. The IBRA subregion for an individual credit sale cannot be displayed – this data is available in the BOS transactions register.
A map of IBRA subregions is available at Australian Government Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment's Australia's bioregions – maps webpage.
To find out which OTG a Plant Community Type (PCT) belongs to, please use the PCT to OTG lookup tool or seek advice from your accredited assessor or the BOS Help Desk, or if you have a Biodiversity Assessment Method (BAM) Biodiversity Credit Report from BOAMS or the BAM Calculator, you can find out which OTG a particular PCT belongs to from this report.
OTG data is sourced directly from the BOS public registers. If an error has been identified, please contact the BOS Help Desk.
To untick all options in a menu, scroll to the top of the menu and tick 'select all' and then click it again to untick. This will clear all of your options within a menu. Alternatively, refresh the webpage – this should set all options back to default.
The weighted price average is displayed in the 'Market Price per credit' box on the market overview page (page 2). It is calculated by adding up the total value of each transaction and dividing it by the total number of credits traded for the selected criteria. In simple terms, it is the average price of the selected credits. The average price is based on historical prices and may not be an accurate estimate of future prices. For more detailed information on individual trades, please see the BOS transactions register.
The number of sales refers to the number of transactions that have occurred within selected criteria. A sale occurs where any number of biodiversity credits are exchanged from one party to another for a price (or some other consideration).
In Biodiversity Credits Market Sales Dashboard (the Sales Dashboard), the number of credits transferred refers to the total number of biodiversity credits exchanged in all transactions/sales that have occurred under the selected criteria.
An Offset Trading Group (OTG) is a class of credits that must be retired in accordance with the like-for-like offset rules to satisfy ‘an ecosystem credit obligation.
OTGs are established in section 10.2 of the BAM, which sets out how biodiversity credits sharing similar biodiversity values form a class of credits which can be used to satisfy like-for-like credit obligations.
Where like-for-like credits are not available, credit obligations can be acquitted under the ‘variation rules’ set out in clause 6.4 of the Biodiversity Conservation Regulation 2017. More information about the variation rules can be found on our Offsets rules webpage.
Threatened ecological communities (TEC) ecosystem credits are OTGs in themselves, so the OTG has the same name as the TEC. While some Plant Community Types (PCTs) are associated with more than one TEC OTG, once a TEC ecosystem credit is created, the PCT is assigned to a single TEC OTG. A TEC OTG can only trade with the same TEC OTG.
Non-TEC credit PCTs are assigned to a single OTG which trades in the market under the assigned OTG. This data is represented in the Sales Dashboard.
For technical guidance on how to use the dashboard, please refer to the Biodiversity Credits Market Sales Dashboard: User Guide. The User Guide explains how to navigate through the dashboard and use specific functions.
If you have any further questions, please contact BOS.helpdesk@environment.nsw.gov.au for BOS questions or OEH.SPDEnvironmentalMarkets@environment.nsw.gov.au for technical questions on the Sales Dashboard.