Around The Web

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

The Washington Department of Ecology (ECY) has revealed the list of entities registered to hold allowances and offsets in the state's WCI-modelled cap-and-invest programme throughout Q4, with the number of companies more than 70% higher than entities that have qualified to bid in auctions.

Compliance entities in the California Carbon Allowance (CCA) market grew both V23 and V24 holdings, while speculators in the RGGI Allowance (RGA) market did the same, as Washington Carbon Allowance (WCA) market saw both groups add to their net length, US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) data showed Friday.

An exchange backed by the Taiwanese government saw trade in international carbon credits on its inaugural day on Friday, with solid interest from domestic companies.

A Latin American airline group has agreed to buy 400,000 carbon offsets over 10 years to help protect 22,000 hectares in the Amazon and Cerrado biomes of Brazil.

Corporates would be left off the hook for climate targets if the VCMI’s new ‘flexibility’ claim idea for Scope 3 emissions is given the green light, warns a report that finds some companies could even increase their climate pollution up to 2030 as a result.

Mining giant BHP Billiton has completed a joint pilot project with China Baowu Steel Group that focuses on reduced emissions from mined iron ore used in the production of mining car wheels, and using carbon credits to offset the residual greenhouse gases.

An emerging markets hedge fund has made an investment into a prominent climate financier in the voluntary carbon market.

The UK government’s announcement this week on its plans to set up a competitive carbon capture, utilisation and storage (CCUS) market was full of references to imports, opening up a way for the green transition to bring the UK and EU closer together in the wake of Brexit. 

A fund focused on conservation in the ‘jaguar corridor’ area of Latin America aims to raise between $100 million and $130 mln by mid-2024, Carbon Pulse has learned.

Sales surge as cities and states look to cut pollution from cars and improve options for Americans to get around

After several years of false starts, electric bikes are finally entering the American mainstream, amid booming sales of a multiplying number of models on offer and as more states offer incentives for people to ditch their cars and shift to two, motor-assisted, wheels.

This year could be considered “the year of the ebike”, according to John MacArthur, a transport researcher at Portland State University. Ebike sales in the United States leaped by 269% between 2019 and 2022, with the market size expected to have grown further in 2023, to be worth $2.59bn.

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A decision by the EU to keep rebalancing tariffs on US steel and aluminium products on stand-by this week may be a sign that tension between the two sides is easing after a years-long dispute, the EU's industry hopes.

Voluntary carbon credit retirements have almost reached the same level as a year earlier with just days remaining in 2023, boosted by a surge in activity by an oil major early on Friday.

A fund created as an alternative to carbon offsetting by a EU-based climate project platform has launched a three-pronged call for proposals ahead of its fourth round of allocations of grants and pre-purchases in Q2 2024.

The Secretariat of the ART carbon credit standard on Friday announced that it has approved a listing for Burkina Faso under its TREES jurisdictional certification programme.

A cross-party group of British MPs has urged the UK government to consider demand management measures for the aviation sector and to account comprehensively for the carbon footprint of sustainable aviation fuels (SAFs) to ensure its 2050 net zero emissions goal is met.

Large Indian industries will be unable to escape the carbon border adjustment mechanism (CBAM) announced by the UK earlier this week, according to some trade experts, who further added that soon all value-added products will be included under the mechanism.

EUAs extended their week-long rally in a shortened session on Friday before the four-day Christmas break, shrugging off an initial dip in response to the 22% increase in auction volumes scheduled for the first eight months of 2024 as traders continued to trim short positions ahead of the holiday.

Climate-related equity indices should still be subject to EU oversight, according to a position agreed by EU member states this week that endorsed a proposal that most benchmarks should not remain under the scope of regulation.

Despite a typical suburban upbringing – and two PhDs – Jonathan Cornford and his family decided to restrain their consumption

• Change by Degrees offers life hacks and sustainable living tips each Saturday to help reduce your household’s carbon footprint
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When my wife, Kim, and I got married in 1995 we decided, in our youthful idealism, that we would try to “live simply so that others might simply live”. It turns out that living simply can sometimes be quite complicated. Nevertheless, from the outset it was clear to us that living simply should involve living on a lower income than the Australian norm. We were sort of downshifters, except we had never shifted up in the first place.

The bulk of our married life has been spent living at an income level that put us in the bottom 20% of Australian households. We now have two older teenagers, and for most of their lives our family technically hovered around the Australian household poverty line. But “poverty” has been very far from our experience.

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