Carbon offsets can link mining competitiveness with rural development, allowing companies to reduce part of their carbon tax liability while financing land restoration, rural jobs and farmer incomes, Dr. Storm Patel, Commercial Director of The African Stove Company (TASC), said at the launch of the Minerals Council South Africa's inaugural Climate Change Day of Learning on November 5, 2026.

“This is not a substitute for cutting emissions at the mine; it is a complementary tool that gives industry a financial reason to invest in climate action beyond the mine gate,” Patel told an audience of public and private sector climate mitigation protagonists.

South Africa's Carbon Tax Act permits companies to surrender carbon offsets for a portion of their emissions — 15% for combustion emissions and 10% for process and fugitive emissions. Patel described the allowance as a “forward-thinking” mechanism that channels finance to sectors the tax does not reach, such as agriculture, household energy efficiency and waste.

She illustrated the saving with an example of a mining company generating 100,000 tonnes of taxable greenhouse gas emissions a year — 40,000 tonnes from burning fuel and 60,000 tonnes from process and fugitive emissions. By using the offset allowance, the company could save R2.3 million on its tax bill in a “use it or lose it” scenario, with allowance roll-overs disallowed.

“By making use of the opportunity, companies save money, South Africa's climate goals move faster, and communities benefit,” she said.

Minerals Council senior climate specialist Shalendra Subramoney said carbon offsets need to form part of a broader portfolio approach to decarbonisation, alongside direct interventions such as renewable energy and energy efficiency, particularly given hard-to-abate or residual emissions across Scope 3 value chains.

He noted the council's climate change observatory pilot work with member companies had found that carbon offsets are not yet as widely used as they should be, and that the commercial dimension is becoming more momentous as the carbon tax rate is set to escalate around 2030.

TASC, founded in 2019 largely in response to the carbon tax regulations, has issued 12.4 million carbon credits to date and created more than 700 local jobs. It has 1.2 million hectares benefiting from regenerative grass management projects, of which around 700,000 hectares are communal land and about 500,000 hectares are private commercial land.

Patel said TASC is an end-to-end project developer, taking projects from concept through implementation to commercialising and selling the final credit. A single credit can take years of work and several independent checks — methodology approval, feasibility, financial modelling, a project design document, implementation approval and verification — before it is issued with a unique serial number on a public registry to ensure it is sold only once.

In South Africa, TASC is developing a grassland restoration and stewardship project with local herding communities, covering 604,780 hectares of communal land and 352,218 hectares of private farmland. The project was the first in the world to be registered under Verra's VM42 carbon credit methodology and carries the Climate, Community and Biodiversity (CCB) label, which requires documented evidence of benefits for people living on the land as well as for nature.

Patel said the project works with 178 communal grazing associations and 145 commercial farms, with an aim of two million hectares under management by 2030. It incentivises farmers to adopt regenerative practices through access to veterinary services, mobile meat auctions and mobile sheep shearing services, with revenue from those market access opportunities going entirely to communities.

“The project investments, the budget for eco-ranger salaries, fire management, vet care equipment, sits with the communities who are then owners of the project, not just the beneficiaries,” Patel said.

The project is implemented alongside Meat Naturally, a farmer-owned social enterprise. In Uganda, TASC is implementing a project to improve safe water systems through the distribution of 30,000 ceramic water filters.

Patel outlined three main markets for carbon credits: the voluntary market, where companies buy credits to back their own net-zero plans; the compliance market, where South African carbon taxpayers retire eligible offsets to reduce their tax bill; and the Article 6 market under the Paris Agreement, where countries trade emission reductions and count them towards their nationally determined contributions.

She said the biggest buyers of internationally transferred mitigation outcome (ITMO) units are currently Japan, Singapore, South Korea and Switzerland, describing the ITMO area as “extremely active”. Once Article 6 is fully operational, South Africa will have a second international buyer for its credits, potentially at a price higher than the carbon tax rate — though if South Africa sells to another country, it can no longer count the reduction towards its own NDC.

“Put simply, the good thing happens in one place, and the credit then travels to where it's needed,” Patel said.