Carbon Pulse

European carbon allowance prices are expected to embark on a sustained rally in the near future as the current 100 million-tonne annual surplus in supply dwindles to become an annual deficit of as much as 300 Mt after the end of the REPowerEU programme, according to a veteran analyst.

A direct air capture developer is teaming up with a carbon storage technology company to create a value chain for extracting CO2 from the atmosphere and permanently storing it underground, helping to streamline the sale of carbon credits, it announced on Wednesday.

President Joe Biden's administration has launched a programme to restore and protect 3 million hectares of wetlands and 160,000 kilometres of rivers in the US by 2030, with over 100 NGOs, Tribes, and local governments joining the initiative as early members.

European carbon prices gave up gains of as much as 2.7% on Wednesday morning in sync with a reversal in energy markets and the publication of weekly Commitment of Traders data that showed the biggest reduction in investment funds' bearish bets in a month.

Countries in the Asia Pacific region are highly vulnerable to nature-related risks, including loss of biodiversity, an increase in pollution, and the non-availability of freshwater, and the failure to address these losses could lead material financial risk for companies and institutional investors, panellists told a webinar Wednesday.

Plastic credits should be used wherever there’s a financing gap to make plastic collection happen and as a bridge to extended producer responsibility regulation, while they should be sufficiently expensive to dissuade plastic makers from producing the waste in the first place, according to a developer of track and trace software for waste recovery.

Small industrial emitters falling under the “other” sectors covered by the EU’s Emissions Trading System for road transport and heating fuels, ETS2, are typically German installations burning fossil gas in plants of less than 20 megawatts, analysts say.

New emissions data from Australia’s climate change department shows emissions in its largest resources export state rose over the previous year by 9 million tonnes of CO2-e but those in its largest coal mining state have dropped significantly every year for five consecutive years.

One of the world's largest steelmakers has teamed up with government agencies to increase carbon sequestration and protect marine ecosystems in South Korea, using steel by-products to help cultivate seaweeds.

The production of energy-intensive green steel, chemicals, and hydrogen is likely to migrate from countries with limited renewables resources to those with abundant supply over the next two decades — but that does not have to result in a deindustrialisation for those that lose the operations, according to a study published on Wednesday. 

The Australian state of Victoria is committing A$3.8 million ($2.5 mln) to develop tools and guidelines for renewable energy project developers to avoid harming local biodiversity, it announced Wednesday.

Australia's Woodside Energy saw its climate action plan rejected by shareholders at its annual general meeting in Perth on Wednesday with nearly 60% of investors voting against it, while the chairman suffered one of the largest shareholder revolts recorded for an ASX50 company in recent years.

A Thai state-owned bank has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with a Bangkok-based climate consultancy to support domestic businesses and farmers in meeting their decarbonisation goals through trading of carbon credits and renewable energy certificates (RECs), it said in a statement.

A carbon dioxide removal (CDR) venture has made an advanced purchase of CDRs from mineralised CO2 in demolished concrete from multiple projects across Europe, it announced Tuesday.

Japan has opened the door to the use of international credits from carbon dioxide removal (CDR) projects in its domestic carbon market, though market response might be tepid due to the entry threshold and the limited scope of eligible projects.

WCI traders’ expectations for more clarifications on cap adjustment details, cost containment changes, and allowance allocation considerations from ARB at Tuesday’s workshop failed to materialise, resulting in volatile price action in the secondary market.

Rabobank and Plan Vivo have pushed back against reporting by investigative journalism outlet Follow the Money (FTM), which revealed that Cote d’Ivoire had asked the Dutch bank to suspend its carbon credit origination activities in the country’s Nawa region over double counting fears.

Canada’s British Columbia has updated its offset regulation and published its second forest carbon offset protocol (FCOP 2.0), which mandates First Nations’ engagement across all projects and stipulates measures that could see fewer credits awarded to project developers in the event of a reversal.

The Australian government has provided A$330 mln ($214 mln) in grant funding to heavy industrial facilities across the country to reduce their CO2 emissions by 830,000 tonnes per year, it announced Wednesday.

Major US corporations are backing a campaign against a voter initiative in Washington that seeks to overturn the state’s cap-and-trade programme, with some $11 million mobilised by the time it launched last week.