Carbon Pulse

Switzerland’s carbon credit procurement agency has opened its first call for proposals for GHG-cutting activities, with the aim of tying up its first emission trade agreements under the Paris Agreement.

More than 40% of electricity sold by China’s grid companies this year is likely to go through its recently-established power markets, according to the China Electricity Council (CEC), marking further progress in the ongoing power market reform seen as crucial for the success of the national carbon market.

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

EUAs shot up more than 5% to a one-month high on Wednesday as financial markets reacted positively to Brexit progress deemed to reduce the risk of Britain crashing out of the EU.

Virginia’s Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) disputed comments that its proposed RGGI-linked ETS would significantly increase costs for consumers, while the agency omitted language that would cause the cap to decline after 2030.

A backlog of registry-listed forestry projects will finally culminate in large issuances of California Carbon Offsets (CCOs) this year, but the estimated future supply of credits that will provide direct environmental benefits to the state (DEBs) will remain low, analysts said Wednesday.

California fuel sector emissions likely dropped in 2018 for the first time in the state's carbon market era, while the power sector could see an increase after years of GHG reductions, according to Carbon Pulse estimates.

Governments are chronically underfunding the restoration of natural landscapes that can simultaneously tackle climate change and biodiversity loss, an international group of campaigners said Wednesday.

EU ETS reforms have strengthened the case for countries to ramp up their own climate action in capped sectors by greatly reducing the carbon price-damping effect of national policies, according to experts.

China has circulated a set of draft regulations for its national emissions trading scheme for public consultation, the first official ETS document to surface since the government delayed the programme indefinitely in Dec. 2017.

The US EPA’s push to develop rulemaking that declares biomass from managed forests as carbon neutral could run up against the recommendations of the agency’s own science panel, according to a recent review.

Around three times as many carbon allowances will be available in next week’s South Korean auction as in the previous sales, after the government announced Tuesday it has borrowed nearly half a million KAUs from the June volume to boost market supply.

The CDM’s executive board held its first meeting of 2019 last week, where it weighed a number issues including whether online ride-hailing applications should receive carbon offsets and how to expand the struggling scheme's use into urban sectors.

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

The US Department of Energy (DOE) has not delivered its recommendations on which small refiners should receive compliance waivers under the Renewable Fuels Standard (RFS) and the EPA is likely to grant those exemptions on a “rolling basis” once the agency has received them, Administrator Andrew Wheeler said Tuesday.

Swiss-headquartered commodity trading house Ezpada has hired a veteran options trader to help it expand its carbon desk.

An Oregon state senator introduced an amendment Monday to the proposed WCI-modelled carbon market bill that would nix the state’s low-carbon fuel standard (LCFS) to avoid overlapping emission reduction policies.

A Connecticut legislative committee will not review the state's revised RGGI cap-and-trade regulation until late May, meaning the post-2020 Model Rule changes of the northeast US ETS will not take effect until this summer, a state official confirmed to Carbon Pulse.

European carbon prices ended back above €22 on Tuesday on the back of technical buying and short-covering by speculators, and as coal prices continued to crater.

France will begin auctioning green certificates in September, host platform EEX-owned Powernext said Tuesday in confirmation of supply that many observers expect to weigh on prices this year.