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The US EPA on Thursday published preliminary Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) blending quotas for the next three years, and also proposed a pathway for electricity to generate credits (RINs) under the federal biofuels programme.

A Toronto-headquartered global asset manager announced on Thursday a new forest fund to invest in internationally diversified forestland assets with strong carbon storage potential and high conservation value.

Swiss Re has extended its portfolio of biochar-based carbon credits by signing a large multi-year offtake agreement with German-based digital MRV marketplace Carbonfuture, the two companies announced Thursday.

Officials ‘scratching our heads’ over deaths of 40 bovines since October that lack telltale signs of wolf attacks

Investigators in Colorado have been left baffled after dozens of cattle inexplicably dropped dead in a remote corner of the state.

The mystery has triggered a wave of US press coverage, with the New York Post running a headline claiming: “Cattle slaughtered by mystery creature that left no tracks”.

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The European Commission and Parliament agree the size of the Innovation Fund is crucial to support industry decarbonisation, the Parliament heard on Thursday, with lawmakers calling for unity against a member state plan to divert some of the Fund's carbon market revenue to the REPowerEU initiative. 

Wearable devices powered by kinetic energy of cows will gather data to help track cattle wellbeing

Cows on farms could soon have their health, reproductive readiness and location monitored by smart technology powered by the kinetic energy of the animal’s movements.

Devices that monitor the health of each cow or keep them within invisible fences are already used on farms but these smart tools are often powered by chemical batteries, which add to energy used by an emissions-intensive industry.

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Firm restoring nature on two estates hopes to provide ordinary investors 5% annual return over 10 years

Ordinary people are being invited to invest in projects to rewild the Scottish Highlands by a company that is restoring nature on two estates and seeking to expand its rewilding portfolio.

“Citizen rewilders” can invest a minimum of £50 and up to £200,000 in £10 shares in Highlands Rewilding, which hopes to provide a 5% annual return on the investment over 10 years.

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Criticism of past 12 years comes as minister admits fresh delay to post-Brexit farm payment schemes

Landowners have told the environment secretary they are “running out of patience” with the Conservative government after 12 years of the rural economy being “stifled” and delays to nature-friendly farming payment schemes.

At a conference organised by the Country Land and Business Association (CLA), the largest rural landowner group in the country, Thérèse Coffey announced that the review into the new land payments schemes had concluded, but admitted that farmers and other land managers would remain in the dark with regards to detail on payment and standards until next year.

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The Integrity Council for the voluntary carbon market (IC-VCM) announced the appointment of three new members to its governing board on Thursday, including two Indigenous Peoples members, fulfilling a long-standing promise from the cross-stakeholder initiative, which aims to provide guidance on what constitutes “high quality” for voluntary carbon offsets.

EUAs rose for the sixth time in seven days as buying once again drove the market to a new three-month high, while energy prices gave back some early gains as several EU countries called for a more dynamic natural gas price-capping mechanism than that which was proposed by the Commission in November.

The EU's flagship Fit for 55 climate plan is set to outsource deforestation and sacrifice carbon storage and biodiversity in Europe in an effort to drive bioenergy expansion, according to a paper published in a research journal that points out one amendment under consideration could reduce this risk.  

As participants arrive in Montreal to negotiate this decade’s targets for protecting biodiversity, two themes are getting the lion’s share of attention

After more than two years of delays, Cop15, the once-in-decade global biodiversity summit, is about to begin. More than 10,000 participants from across the planet will start arriving in Montreal at the weekend to negotiate crucial goals for protecting biodiversity.

There has been a coordinated push behind some targets, namely from a group of countries that want to protect 30% of land and sea for nature (30x30) by the end of the decade. The idea of “nature positive” is another theme being promoted in the pre-Cop15 rhetoric from NGOs and governments.

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Opponents of meaningful action are trying to sidestep the immediacy of the threat to our planet

Expert opinion is settled and public opinion united on the urgency of climate action. If our politics or our discourse were in any way functional, there would be no confusion, no debate. We would simply be proceeding from one bold practical action to the next, following the blueprints laid out by the Climate Change Committee.

Instead, we have energy policies stitched together from reheated cliches, which on the one hand doesn’t matter, since no prime minister has been stable or focused enough to iterate them since Brexit, but on the other hand does matter. There is nothing more depressing than to go back to Amber Rudd’s “energy reset” speech of 2015: what if, instead of dismissing renewables incentives as “Blairite”, she’d actually taken them seriously and built on them? What if she’d pushed energy-efficient homes instead of the “unfettered market”, what if she’d made a plan to reduce dependence on gas from Vladimir Putin rather than increase it? “Spoiler alert,” wrote the renewables entrepreneur Bruce Davis at the time: “this doesn’t end well for bill payers.” And nor has it.

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Customers pay on average 20% of their bill towards servicing debt and rewarding shareholders, says CMA

• Down the drain: how billions of pounds are sucked out of England’s water system
• England’s water firms respond to investigation into role of global investors

Ofwat is refusing to limit the soaring debts run up by water companies as research reveals the firms have outstanding borrowing of almost £54bn accrued since privatisation.

Customers are paying on average £80 or 20% of their water bill towards servicing debt and rewarding shareholders, according to the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA).

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Taiwan should prioritise the development of biomass carbon sinks and emerging nature-based solutions to help reach its 2050 net zero targets, a government-funded research institute has urged.

The premium of UK carbon prices to their European counterparts has eroded completely in the last two months as the two markets have moved in opposite directions since the differential reached its peak in September, and funds have amassed a net short position in the UK market.

Anglo-Australian mining company Rio Tinto aims to boost the role of offsets over the next decade to help meet its 2030 climate target, it announced at an investor seminar Thursday, where it laid out details about its $7.5 billion investment plan across several abatement programmes to cut its operational emissions in half by the end of the decade.

Rapid decarbonisation in China's power sector should put the country on 1.9°C pathway, though more actions are needed for the country to help limit global warming to 1.5C, a recent report has found.

Climate change minister tells parliament official projection of 40% cut does not factor in all Labor’s policy commitments

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Australia’s climate change minister, Chris Bowen, has declared the country on track to reach a 40% cut in climate pollution by 2030 – just short of the national target of 43% – but the government has been told a “big upward shift in momentum” is needed to tackle the problem.

Giving the country’s first climate statement to parliament, which is now required annually under legislation passed earlier this year, Bowen said the official projection of a 40% cut did not factor in all Labor’s policy commitments, and that those measures would “lift our result to at least 43%”.

The statement did not shed light on what the government would do to make deeper cuts in line with its goal of limiting global heating to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels, an expectation raised by a UN-backed report if the Great Barrier Reef is to avoid being nominated as a world heritage site “in danger”. It also did not mention the country’s vast coal and gas export industries.

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The Archeoplastica project exhibits more than 200 artefacts found on beaches, from retro toys to food packets to detergent bottles – some dating back to the 1960s. As countries finally gather to begin the first of five meetings to negotiate an international plastics treaty, the collection highlights the disturbing fact that plastic pollution does not perish

• All photographs by the Museum of Archeoplastica

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