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Australia has pledged to cut emissions to net zero by 2050, but is it enough to prevent disastrous global heating? Guardian Australia's resident experts on all things climate change - editor Lenore Taylor, environment editor Adam Morton and environment reporter Graham Readfearn - chat with off-platform editor Antoun Issa on Instagram Live, answering audience questions on Australia's climate policies ahead of the Cop26 climate summit in Glasgow.

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• Scott Morrison refuses to release net zero 2050 modelling amid condemnation of climate policy
  
• ‘Hollow’: how the Morrison government’s 2050 net zero pledge was reported around the world
• We’ve spent a year waiting for this 2050 climate plan and it’s actually just the status quo with some new speculative graphs | Katharine Murphy
• Australia’s net zero emissions ‘plan’: the five things you should know
• How does Australia’s response to the climate crisis compare with the rest of the world?

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NSW seeking gigawatts of wind, solar and storage proposals in new REZ, and is also looking for load changes, and innovative network solutions.

The post NSW seeks gigawatts of wind, solar and storage proposals in South-West REZ appeared first on RenewEconomy.

US biofuel credit (RINs) prices fell to a one-month low on Thursday as market participants said refiners were absent from the market as stakeholders wait for the EPA to publish two years’ worth of Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) volumes.

California Carbon Allowance (CCA) and RGGI Allowance (RGA) prices both registered new all-time highs this week, though the records proved short lived as the bull run cooled off in the WCI programme and Pennsylvania’s Democratic gubernatorial candidate signalled hesitancy about participating in the Northeast US power sector scheme.

Germany-based utility RWE, the EU’s top corporate emitter, reported a 23.5% jump in its ETS-covered thermal power output for the first nine months of the year, it said late Thursday.

Large British companies will be forced to report their climate-related risks from next year, according to government plans unveiled on Thursday that would make the UK the world’s first nation to impose detailed mandatory disclosures.

Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney likens oil company bosses’ responses to those of tobacco industry at historic hearing

The chief executive of ExxonMobil, Darren Woods, was accused of lying to Congress on Thursday after he denied that the company covered up its own research about oil’s contribution to the climate crisis.

For the first time, Woods and the heads of three other major petroleum companies were questioned under oath at a congressional hearing into the industry’s long campaign to discredit and deny the evidence that burning fossil fuels drove global heating. When pressed to make specific pledges or to stop lobbying against climate initiatives, all four executives declined.

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Labor is not due to announce its full climate plan until after international climate talks in Glasgow. Rebecca Pearse, Lecturer, Australian National University Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

The White House released its compromise deal for its deadlocked spending package on Thursday, with President Joe Biden confident that substantial cuts to key climate and social provisions mean the measure can pass Congress after months of testing negotiations.

US climate envoy John Kerry stressed his country's pledge to drastically hike adaptation aid to poor nations on Thursday, but experts questioned the undertaking that still lacks lawmaker approval just days before UN climate talks.

Cop26 breakthrough will require rich nations to finally make good on promise to help poorer ones

Next month’s Cop26 talks could end in abject failure. Anybody who has monitored the tortuous attempts of the World Trade Organization to piece together a global free trade agreement knows how hard multilateral negotiations can be.

A breakthrough in Glasgow is possible but requires two things to happen: the world’s leading emitters of greenhouse gases need to accelerate their net zero carbon plans; and they have to recognise it is their own self-interest to help the less fortunate countries already struggling with the effects of global heating.

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George Eustice did his best not to start an all-out trade war with France over fishing rights but his fellow MPs were less pacific

It’s war. At least it would be if a handful of Tory MPs got their way. And who better to fight than the French? Our oldest enemy. The cause of the dispute was the British trawler detained overnight by our beastly neighbours for allegedly fishing without permission in French territorial waters, and now the subject of an urgent question in the Commons.

It was left to George Eustice, the secretary of state for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, to try to negotiate a peace. Or failing that, a truce. If the French were to intensify their checks on seafood at Calais, then the food supply chain really would be in trouble. He still wasn’t entirely clear quite what had happened, he insisted, but he was sure it was all just a misunderstanding of some sort.

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Australia needs a mass citizens’ movement, bringing together friend and foe, farmer and city dweller, across generations

There are no climate deniers any more. Whatever anger we feel at the opportunities missed, we still celebrate that the battle of ideas, at least, is won.

Now there are climate hawks and climate doves. Hawks see a global emergency and the need to mobilise as if human civilisation is at stake. Doves – the moderates in the business community and governments who serve their interests – see a serious environmental problem that we should address, but slowly and without too much disruption, especially to them.

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Companies must halve their emissions by 2030 and cut them 90-95% under 2015 levels before 2050 to meet net zero emissions targets endorsed by the Science-Based Targets initiative (SBTi), with only the remaining output neutralised through carbon removals.

ESG commodities marketplace Xpansiv’s CBL platform on Thursday said it will introduce a new standardised voluntary emissions reduction (VER) contract based on initial principles recommended by the Taskforce on Scaling Voluntary Carbon Markets (TSVCM).

Scandals and backdoor support for fossil fuels blight an organisation that ought to be taking the lead at Cop26

• Jake Hess is a researcher at the World Bank in Washington DC

The World Bank is facing the biggest test in its history. Next week, Bank executives are attending the Cop26 global climate summit in Glasgow, where key decisions about the fate of humanity will be made. If the Bank wants to achieve its official goals of eradicating poverty and building shared prosperity, now is the time to step up. Because nothing will increase poverty and undermine prosperity more than runaway global warming.

It is likely to fail this test, however. At a time when the world needs to move away from dirty energy as quickly as possible, the Bank has spent more than $12bn on direct fossil fuel project financing since the landmark Paris climate agreement. And its overall credibility is weaker than ever after a data manipulation scandal involving senior leaders.

Jake Hess is a researcher at the World Bank in Washington DC

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China released its updated climate plan under the Paris Agreement on Thursday, but without raising its emissions reduction ambition levels.

Encouraging short-distance travel by the most damaging mode of transport shows yet again that profit trumps climate action

I don’t like to be constantly complaining about things, so let’s start with the good stuff from Wednesday’s budget announcement that air passenger duty (APD) is going to be halved on domestic flights. It won’t take long.

The best thing about it is that the cut in domestic APD will now apply only to those in the cheapest seats – “reduced rate” passengers. The Treasury had consulted on a change that would have cut £39 from the cost of an internal private jet flight, and £13 for a first-class traveller – but this didn’t happen, thankfully. It is also true that the overall direct impact on carbon emissions of this new tax incentive to domestic air travel is likely to be small; domestic flights account for just 4% of UK aviation emissions, and this cut in the tax rates won’t do much to change that.

Leo Murray is co-founder and director of innovation at climate charity Possible

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The tools at Biden’s disposal to limit dangerous global heating are enormous. If he wants it, he can do it – but does he want it?

After months of bullish rhetoric about the United States’ climate leadership, the US could still show up to COP 26 empty handed. That doesn’t have to be the case – whatever charismatic obstructionists like Joe Manchin or Kyrsten Sinema have to say about it. The climate certainly isn’t waiting on them to change: the UN Emissions Gap Report released this week finds that the world is on track to warm by a catastrophic 2.7C degrees.

The White House has pegged its Paris Agreement success on being able to pass an ambitious spending package, with plenty of money built in for key climate priorities. In recent weeks the administration pegged its audacious goal, of slashing emission by at least 50 percent below 2005 levels by 2030, to something called a Clean Electricity Payments Program (CEPP). That’s out. And even if the compromise $55bn a year of climate spending the White House promised on Thursday makes it through to legislation, carrots for green spending can only go so far. The US will still not have picked up critical sticks needed to go after the polluting industries driving up temperatures.

Kate Aronoff is a staff writer at The New Republic. She is the co-author of A Planet To Win: Why We Need A Green New Deal (Verso) and the co-editor of We Own The Future: Democratic Socialism, American Style (The New Press)

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A British company has launched what it claims is the world’s smallest industrial carbon capture solution, a technology aiming to overcome a key barrier to widespread CCUS adoption and industrial decarbonisation, the company said on Thursday.