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A consortium led by two major South Korean companies has taken an undisclosed stake in a global developer of carbon credits as they seek to increase their involvement in nature-based as well as technology-based projects.

EU institutions agreed on updated rules to decarbonise the gas market and create a hydrogen one on Friday evening, which will enable the bloc to further reduce its dependence on gas, as well as agree that long-term contracts for unabated fossil gas should not extend beyond 2049.

It is Day 10 – Nature Day – at COP28, where already tense negotiations about the global stocktake (GST) and Article 6 carbon markets are heating up, with announcements also seeping in on biodiversity and nature-based solutions (NbS). Week 2 is well underway, and it's now crunch time in Dubai. Fortunately, Carbon Pulse's hardworking correspondents are on the ground in Expo City wading through reports, gathering intel, and skulking around the sidelines of the summit so you don't have to. In our daily running blog, we will report relevant or useful updates throughout the day. Timestamps are in local time (Gulf Standard Time, GMT+4).

Guerrilla leader turned president says, faced with having to reduce their carbon consumption, upper classes fear ‘the barbarians are coming’

Middle-class fears of losing a high standard of living because of green policies is driving the rise of the far right across the world, the president of Colombia has warned.

In a wide-ranging interview with the Guardian at the Cop28 UN climate summit, Gustavo Petro, Colombia’s first leftwing president, said the world had to find carbon-free ways of being prosperous, and that his country’s rich biodiversity would be the basis of its wealth after phasing out fossil fuels.

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Exclusive: freedom of information request reveals ministers rejected plan to make pledge legally binding

The UK government has no plans to meet its target for everyone to live within a 15-minute walk of a green space, the Guardian can reveal.

Ministers have also scrapped an idea to make the target for access to nature legally binding, a freedom of information request submitted by the Right to Roam campaign shows.

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As the conference goes into the last few days, today’s theme will be nature and forests

It’s the Global day of action today. There have already been demonstrations in the Philippines, demanding urgent action at Cop28.

There are demonstrations planned around the UK today too. But it’s a little confusing because a number of countries – Belgium and Spain for example – ran demonstrations last weekend. So the concentrated force is perhaps not quite what it could be.

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Global public and private funding that has a detrimental impact on nature stands at a massive $7 trillion per year, while funding with a positive impact last year reached $200 billion, UNEP said in its annual State of Finance for Nature report, released Saturday.

Inaction and self-interest are built into climate summits. Instead, we need a voting system that can’t be subverted by fossil fuel producers

Let’s face it: climate summits are broken. The delegates talk and talk, while Earth systems slide towards deadly tipping points. Since the climate negotiations began in 1992 more carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels has been released worldwide than in all preceding human history. This year is likely to set a new emissions record. They are talking us to oblivion.

Throughout these Conference of the Parties (Cop) summits, fossil fuel lobbyists have swarmed the corridors and meeting rooms. It’s like allowing weapons manufacturers to dominate a peace conference. This year, the lobbyists outnumber all but one of the national delegations. And they’re not the only ones: Cop28 is also heaving with meat and livestock lobbyists and reps from other planet-trashing industries. What should be the most important summit on Earth is treated like a trade fair.

George Monbiot is a Guardian columnist

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Planning approval given for 2,000 MWh battery in Collie that could double in size and will be used to soak up solar and shift it to the evening peaks, replacing coal.

The post Planning approval given for Australia’s biggest battery to soak up solar and replace coal appeared first on RenewEconomy.

Food and agriculture firms have sent three times as many delegates to the climate summit as last year

Lobbyists from industrial agriculture companies and trade groups have turned out in record numbers at Cop28, with three times as many delegates representing the meat and dairy industry as last year.

Representatives are present from some of the world’s largest agribusiness companies – such as the meat supplier JBS, the fertiliser giant Nutrien, the food giant Nestlé and the pesticide company Bayer – as well as powerful industry lobby groups.

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

Compliance entities and speculators moved in opposite directions with their California Carbon Allowance (CCA) and RGGI holdings, while both groups reduced their Washington Carbon Allowance (WCA) positions over the last week, US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) data showed Friday.

The UN climate talks turn to oceans and a Pacific islander is here to fight for her home.

California's free carbon allowance distributions to industrials will rise for 2024, with petroleum and hydrogen production accounting for the highest year-on-year climb, according to data from state regulator ARB published on Friday.

The US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ruling in favour of small refineries' arguments for exemptions for ethanol blending under the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) against the EPA could cause a renewable fuel supply glut, two industry experts agreed.

In the context of increasing reports of forest carbon-related cooperative approaches under Article 6 of the Paris Agreement, Parties should apply strive to ensure that all credits transacted are of the highest quality by applying guidance developed by leading environmental and Indigenous organisations, writes the Wildlife Conservation Society and other groups.

Deforestation in Brazil’s Cerrado region was the worst on record last month, according to government data.

A global network of forest mapping and monitoring actors on Friday launched the development of a biomass reference system in an early step towards a free, independent, and public system for the validation and calibration of forest carbon stock data. 

Remains of baby dinosaurs inside another dinosaur reveal what a young predator ate 75m years ago.

Oil and gas interests are fighting hard to prevent decarbonisation, as they always have done

It was never really in doubt. But the first week of Cop28, which ended with a rest day on Thursday, made one crucial fact impossible to ignore: the fossil fuel industry is not planning to go quietly. Far more of its lobbyists are in the UAE than have attended UN climate talks before. One analysis counted 2,456 of them – nearly four times the number registered last year in Egypt.

The battle is hotting up over what next week’s report on progress towards the Paris goals, known as the global stocktake, will say. Fossil fuel interests – both corporate and national – are pushing hard to avoid references to the phase-out that would signal the end of their business model and vast profits. They don’t want an energy transition that leads to their demise.

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