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Under the Tories, non-violent climate protesters were jailed for up to five years – and there is little sign that Labour will change tack

• Linda Lakhdhir is the legal director of Climate Rights International

In December 2023 when Stephen Gingell was sentenced to six months in prison for slow marching for half an hour on the Holloway Road in north London, the sentence was considered shocking. Unfortunately, it is far from the exception. In fact, my organisation, Climate Rights International, has spent the past eight months looking into restrictions on climate protests among western democracies and has found that the UK – mostly under the Conservatives – has introduced some of the harshest anti-protest legislation in recent years.

You may remember Morgan Trowland and Marcus Decker, who were sentenced to multi-year prison sentences in April 2023 for climbing the cables of the Queen Elizabeth II bridge to object to new oil, gas and coal projects. The three-year sentence imposed on Trowland was, at the time, the longest ever for a climate protest in the UK. But, it has since been surpassed. In July, in a case that made international headlines, five fossil-fuel protesters were sentenced to four- and five-year sentences after participating in a Zoom call about staging climate protests on the M25.

Linda Lakhdhir is the legal director of Climate Rights International

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The mission is the first of three funded by payments processing business founder Jared Isaacman.

A major fossil fuel company has partnered with a professional services firm to repurpose a hydrocracking refinery in Germany into a base oil production unit and enable the production of renewable hydrogen, they announced on Tuesday.

Fourth global methane budget shows emissions of this potent greenhouse gas are still rising rapidly. This is bad news, but not an impossible problem.

The post Methane emissions are at new highs. It could put us on a dangerous climate path appeared first on RenewEconomy.

The world’s first cross-border carbon capture and storage scheme (CCS) is now open for business in the Danish waters of the North Sea, laying the groundwork to store up to 8 million tonnes of CO2 a year in the basin from 2030.

European carbon allowances weakened on Tuesday morning as natural gas prices slipped on diminishing concerns that US Gulf production might be impacted by an approaching tropical storm, while the looming September EUA options contract expiry was said to be starting to exert a pull on prices.

Methane emissions have risen 20% in the past two decades, a global report released this week has found, and threatens the goals of the Global Methane Pledge, which aims to reduce methane emissions by 30% by 2030 over 2020 levels.

Healthy renewable and gas power supply in the EU is expected to mute demand for carbon allowances for the rest of the year, as the carbon market waits for updates from the new European Commission to help gauge its level of ambition, according to analysts at Engie. 

European flat oyster is defined as ‘collapsed’ in UK but there are hopes it could return to coastal waters

A box marked “special delivery” arrived about midday at Spurn Discovery Centre, on a remote East Yorkshire peninsula in the Humber estuary.

It is unlikely the postal worker had any idea it contained 300,000 living oyster larvae – tiny pinprick-sized organisms destined to become part of a new oyster reef just off the English coast.

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A Switzerland-based digital carbon standard has decided to delay the takeoff of its biodiversity credit framework due to market uncertainties, expecting to launch the programme within the next 12-18 months.

A cookstoves carbon project developer has urged the EU to "resume its leadership position" on international carbon markets at COP29, citing the disappointment of last year's UN climate summit in Dubai, at a conference in Berlin on Tuesday.

British renewables developer Harmony Energy secures consent to build two new solar farms on New Zealand’s North Island.

The post New Zealand solar spree continues, with two new large-scale projects approved appeared first on RenewEconomy.

Investors should adopt a specific strategy when investing near areas with protected biodiversity, charity ShareAction and the UN Environment Programme World Conservation Monitoring Centre (UNEP-WCMC) said in a report published on Tuesday.

A UK local government pension fund has acquired a minority stake in an asset manager specialising in curbing corporate exposure to nature-related risks, the organisations announced Monday in a joint statement.

A developer of direct air capture and storage (DACS) has raised a €6.75 million seed round including grants to support the build-out of direct air capture testing and development facilities in Germany, as well as to develop its first industrial product, it announced on Tuesday.

International carbon markets are at a crossroads with tangible progress now desperately needed on Article 6, as well as from voluntary integrity initiatives, according to a report from the World Bank published Tuesday.

A Japanese carbon project developer has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with a provincial government in Vietnam to generate carbon credits from methane offset projects spanning 55,000 hectares of rice paddy fields in the Red River Delta.

Monitoring, reporting, and verification (MRV) practices to effectively scale the carbon removal (CDR) market will require collaborative efforts, underpinned by government guidelines, according to a paper featuring perspectives from voluntary CDR buyers, policymakers, and academics.

The recently established Loss and Damage Fund (LDF) should adopt a clear allocation mechanism based on countries’ emissions contributions, among other criteria, according to an Australian think tank’s analysis.

An Australian carbon farming group has launched a new offering to help landholders measure their carbon footprint and generate carbon credits.