Carbon Pulse

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

A New Zealand voluntary carbon certification and advisory service provider will transition out of accepting government-issued NZUs in its programmes, because they are not as rigorously assessed as those submitted to the Integrity Council for Voluntary Carbon Markets (ICVCM), it announced Thursday.

California regulator ARB slashed its compliance offset issuances by almost half in comparison to its prior distribution, state data published Wednesday showed, while premiums for units tagged with direct environmental benefits to the state (DEB) surpassed previous records.

The Australian government will expand its capacity investment scheme (CIS) to secure 32 GW of new wind, solar, and storage output, in a major gear shift to meet its 82% renewable energy target by 2030.

A pharmaceutical and biotech giant as well as a nutrition company launched a regenerative agriculture programme to improve soil health and productivity in Brazil on the same day Brazilian President Lula da Silva is expected to announce the country's restorative pastureland policy.

The EU’s petrochemicals sector faces a fight for survival amid persistently high energy and carbon costs, though some firms are planning for the long-haul by tapping the ETS-financed Innovation Fund as a key source of support.

Geert Wilders, known for his anti-Islam and eurosceptic views, is set to be the unexpected winner of Wednesday’s Dutch election, according to media reports citing exit polls.

The August California-Quebec current vintage carbon auction settled at an all-time peak, even surpassing secondary market prices, while the advance sale clearing price also achieved a new high, according to government data published Wednesday.

A voluntary carbon market registry announced Wednesday a public comment period for a US and Canadian biochar protocol that will provide guidance on how to quantify, monitor, report, and verify emissions reductions from the production and use of biochar.

The European Commission published a proposal on Wednesday for a monitoring framework to help protect the EU's forests, which have become increasingly at risk amid rising temperatures.

NGOs have won a legal battle against illegal pollution caused by coal plants in Romania that is expected to lead to the closure of a number of facilities in the country, they announced on Wednesday. 

The UK government on Wednesday said it is extending to 2030 climate levy reductions for companies that meet emissions targets, among other measures to bolster the path to net zero and reassure investors in green industries, in a finance statement that was lighter on climate policy than some had hoped.

International stakeholders have ahead of COP28 called on world leaders to vastly improve monitoring, reporting, and verification of ocean-based climate activities, including carbon removals, to improve understanding of mitigation and adaptation strategies, in what has been coined the Dubai Ocean Declaration.

The UN's Green Climate Fund (GCF) will look to ramp up its focus on attracting private capital as part of reforms to the mechanism, as it seeks to scale funding to $50 billion by 2030 and address criticism of its role in channeling climate finance, a senior member of the body told Carbon Pulse.

The Clean Cooking Alliance (CCA) has launched a new accelerator programme to boost carbon finance in the clean cooking sector of West Africa.

Green group WWF has announced two biodiversity technology pilot projects it is developing that aim to automate biodiversity monitoring, and predict animal-related epidemic risks.

The European Parliament rejected a text for a proposal to limit EU use of pesticides on Wednesday, in a vote that divided lawmakers amid similar tensions to those seen earlier in the year for the bloc's nature restoration bill.

Banks should set targets supporting countries’ national biodiversity strategies, the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) said in its new nature target-setting guidance, released Wednesday.

European carbon prices fluctuated wildly on Wednesday morning, setting a new year-to-date low but ending the morning marginally higher, as traders positioned themselves both before and after the weekly Commitment of Traders data release, which showed investors had trimmed their net short for the first time in five weeks.

Ship operators can optimise environmental performance and reduce emissions across entire fleets, helping them to more easily comply with international climate regulations, using a new simulator platform launched Wednesday that will later be adjusted to assist with EU ETS compliance.