Around The Web

The first batch of a spirit made with ingredients grown in the Chernobyl exclusion zone is seized.

A daily summary of our news plus bite-sized updates from around the world.

WCI compliance entities and speculators added length in the California Carbon Allowance (CCA) market this week as prices continued on a bull run fuelled by increased financial interest and rising 2022 floor outlooks, according to US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) data published Friday.

Stakeholders are advocating for a variety of technical tweaks to the Transportation & Climate Initiative Programme’s (TCI-P) draft cap-and-trade regulation, while industry groups claimed the four participating US jurisdictions’ CO2 reduction goals were unachievable.

I’ve seen sea lion populations decimated. I want people to understand how wonderful an unafraid wild creature can be

Eared sea lions, or, as most Australians call them, seals, must be about the sweetest, and most loveable of all sea creatures.

Man is their great enemy. Another is that incredible predator the great white shark, or white pointer, but whereas the white shark normally attacks only sick, old, or very slow sea lions, man in his usual fashion is generally not so discriminating.

Continue reading...

EnergyAustralia says it will build a gas-fired generator in NSW, but only after the government pledged $83m. Is it money well spent? And what are the alternatives?

A new gas-fired power plant will be built in New South Wales with significant funding from taxpayers. The plant will blend some green hydrogen in with the gas, prompting some to describe it as “Australia’s first net-zero hybrid power station”.

Is this a breakthrough that signals the future of the electricity grid, a greenwashing of public spending on fossil fuels or something else? Here’s what you need to know.

Continue reading...

The UK’s Environment Agency has rated domestic offsetting methods, attempting to form preferences for meeting its own net zero emissions goal and potentially setting a useful precedent for how other entities can follow.

Norwegian fertiliser company Yara launched a new business on Friday aimed at generating voluntary emissions reductions (VERs) from farmlands worldwide at upwards of $20 per tonne, adding to the spate of agriculture-focused carbon programmes unveiled in the past year.

Big business is getting in on the act as sales of ‘preloved’ garments boom. But can the trend curb our love for fast fashion?

“Few articles change owners more frequently than clothes. They travel downwards from grade to grade in the social scale with remarkable regularity,” wrote the journalist Adolphe Smith in 1877 as he traced a garment’s journey: cleaned, repaired and resold repeatedly; eventually cut down into a smaller item; finally, when it was beyond all wearability, the fibres recycled into new fabric for the wealthier classes.

That model is almost incomprehensible in the era of fast fashion. The average British customer buys four items a month, often at pocket-money prices; though the low cost is a godsend for the hard-up, many purchases are discarded after a few outings, or never worn at all. Clothes Aid reports that 350,000 tonnes of used but still wearable clothing goes to landfill in the UK each year.

Continue reading...

California power sector emissions increased for the third consecutive month in March as electricity demand rose across the Golden State, according to California Independent System Operator (CAISO) data released this week.

The European Commission this week published another year's worth of trading records from the EU ETS emissions registry, offering a comprehensive glimpse of how carbon units equivalent to over 9.3 billion tonnes of CO2 were shifted across more than 30,000 transactions between May 2017 and Apr. 2018.

A summary of legislative and regulatory action on carbon pricing, clean fuel standards, and clean energy at the US subnational and federal level this week, including developments in California, New York, and Virginia.

Swedish miner LKAB has filed a lawsuit against the European Commission over new benchmarks used to determine the free allocation of carbon allowances for steelmaking, according to documents seen by Carbon Pulse on Friday.

Singapore and Japan will steer international emissions trade talks on the Paris Agreement's Article 6 rulebook to a July ministerial-level meeting, according to Alok Sharma, President of the COP26 UN climate negotiations.

EU carbon held near record levels above €50 on Friday amid signs of continued investor inflows and as Europe's climate chief played down prospects of market intervention over soaring EUAs, while calling for even higher prices.

Two of Europe’s major airline groups have flagged difficulties in recovering from the COVID-19 crisis in Q1 2021, but expect demand to ramp up in the coming quarters as lockdown restrictions ease and vaccination rates accelerate.

The combined value of the two US-listed carbon allowance ETFs has topped a quarter of a billion dollars as investor cash continues to flood in.

European Union’s top court dismisses appeal by Bayer against partial ban on use of substances on certain crops

The European Union’s top court has upheld the EU’s partial ban on three insecticides linked to harming bees, preventing their use on certain crops.

The European court of justice on Thursday dismissed an appeal by Bayer to overturn a lower EU court’s 2018 decision to uphold the ban.

Continue reading...

The European Commission should be “very careful not to intervene” in the EU ETS amid the recent speculator-led rally that has brought allowance prices to a record above €50 this week, the bloc’s climate chief said Friday.

Republican governor says measure sends message that Wyoming is ‘prepared to bring litigation to protect our interests’

Wyoming is faced by a transition to renewable energy that’s gathering pace across America, but it has now come up with a novel and controversial plan to protect its mining industry – sue other states that refuse to take its coal.

A new state law has created a $1.2m fund to be used by Wyoming’s governor to take legal action against other states that opt to power themselves with clean energy such as solar and wind, in order to meet targets to tackle the climate crisis, rather than burn Wyoming’s coal.

Continue reading...