Carbon Pulse

The usual slowdown of the summer holiday season has already arrived in the voluntary carbon market with few major shifts in price, aside from a jump in nature-based spot contracts, and generally weak trading activity this week.

Now on a weekly basis, Carbon Pulse rounds up developments in Latin American and Caribbean carbon markets for the week ending July 7, during which new players have emerged and are taking steps to scale their involvement in international markets, while mitigation schemes remain much the same in Colombia and Brazil.

The year 2025 will mark and inflection point in the way maritime companies account for their CO2 emissions, as shippers start realising the consequences of the sector’s inclusion in the EU’s Emissions Trading System (EU ETS), according to a French academic.

A biochar producer has demonstrated a 51% increase in soil carbon in field trials with low levels of biochar applied, and expects to open its second production facility in the next month, with sales of biochar removal credits to improve the affordability of biochar for farmers.

Sunday's voting result in France suggests an 'industrial green deal' may be just what the EU needs to create a successful political alliance in the aftermath of snap legislative elections called by President Emmanuel Macron.

Germany’s biggest flat steel manufacturer hopes to sign renewable hydrogen contracts from Q1 2025, for first deliveries in 2028 and 143,000 tonnes a year from 2029, according to its head of energy strategy.

A startup focused on exchange-traded voluntary carbon investment products has hired an Islamic finance professional two months after securing a fatwa establishing that the firm’s product complies with shariah, according to a press release issued Monday.

Suriname has completed draft national legislation to facilitate carbon trading under Article 6 of the Paris Agreement, according to local media.

Serbia could start supplying the EU with a stable stock of high-grade lithium within four years, helping the bloc produce enough electric vehicles and hit its climate targets, the managing director of Anglo-Australian miner Rio Tinto’s deposit in the country told Carbon Pulse.

The EU’s 35 billion cubic metres (bcm) a year target for biomethane in 2030 could deliver 50 million tonnes of negative emissions through carbon capture at the biogas-to-biomethane conversion stage alone, according to one of Europe’s large traders.

Planted mangrove forests can capture up to three-quarters of the carbon found in natural ones, according to a new paper, which could help better assess how many blue carbon credits can be issued from mangrove restoration projects.

European carbon prices began the week on a positive note as the market rose after Sunday's second round of elections for France's parliament appeared to deal a blow to right-wing parties' hopes of forming a government, but the rally was short-lived and by midday EUAs were again testing support at a key level from last week.

The European Commission pledged to work closely with India to help the country adapt to the incoming Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) fees and introduce its own emissions pricing scheme, during a visit to New Delhi last week. 

An Indian project developer has ventured into the market for carbon credits from enhanced rock weathering (ERW), eyeing projects that generate more credits and at a lower price than other early movers.

The French government put forward its carbon capture, utilisation, and storage (CCUS) strategy on Friday, outlining a roadmap to catch 4-8 million tonnes of CO2 per year by 2030, targeting hard-to-abate sectors of industry across four “CCS valleys”.

A coalition comprising major tech companies and environmental groups in Japan has called on the government to set an aggressive emissions reduction target for its 2035 nationally determined contribution (NDC).

The public body in charge of managing the UK's coal mining legacy has released a nature recovery plan, seeking to include nature-related credits into its financial models by 2026.

Imposing a carbon levy on domestic emitters will likely have limited impact on Taiwan's overall economy, though it remains unclear whether the island will be able to launch its carbon pricing programme next year as planned, according to government meeting documents.

A group of Nordic companies and research institutes have banded together to launch a project aimed at developing a biodiversity credit methodology for the offshore wind sector in the Baltic Sea.

Japan is using its excess volumes of LNG to shape, and in many ways slow down, the energy transition in Southeast Asia, by financing gas infrastructure abroad and promoting transboundary CO2 markets as a decarbonisation solution that critics say is yet-to-be-proven and unrealistic.