Carbon Pulse

The prime minister of Pakistan has rejected a proposal of imposing carbon tax on fossil fuels, citing concerns that the tax may lead to high inflation affecting general public.

G7 finance ministers and central banks met in Italy over the weekend, but with focus on issues like artificial intelligence and Ukraine there was little room for earnest talks on climate issues.

A New Zealand electricity company has announced it will close its gas and trading platform later this year after consulting with staff and being unable to find an interested party to acquire them.

The chair of New Zealand’s Climate Change Commission (CCC), Rod Carr, has confirmed he will retire from his role at the end of his term later this year, the government has announced.

Brazil’s National Bank for Economic and Social Development (BNDES) and the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change (MMA) last week revealed the entities chosen to spearhead its BRL 450-million ($87.5-mln) Amazon forest restoration programme.

Persistent cloud cover poses a substantial challenge for remote sensing technologies that require clear skies to accurately map land covers and measure forest biomass, according to a climate data analytics firm.

Online payments firm Stripe is launching a fellowship programme aimed at accelerating global demand for carbon removals.

A partial repeal of climate-related tax credits in the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), alongside a carbon fee, brings the US closer to achieving its Paris Agreement targets than an expansion of IRA measures alone, and could additionally generate over $2 trillion, according to a working paper modelling climate policy reform to follow the November US elections.

The carbon sequestration capabilities of saltmarshes in the UK and northwest Europe may have been significantly overestimated compared to global averages, according to new research.

A Canadian tech firm has launched an initiative to develop a voluntary carbon credit protocol specifically for grid-scale battery storage.

The province of British Columbia and the Kwiakah First Nation on Friday announced the creation of the Macinuxw Special Forest Management Area, a new conservation and regenerative forestry zone within the southern Great Bear Rainforest.

Both emitters and speculators added to their net holdings of California Carbon Allowances (CCAs) and RGGI Allowances (RGAs), while the latter group continued to shorten their net position in Washington Carbon Allowances (WCAs), according to weekly data from the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC).

A private Calgary-based developer and a global integrated trading company agreed on Friday to develop a carbon capture and storage hub in Alberta with the potential to store up to 10 million tonnes of CO2 per year.

Voluntary carbon market (VCM) participants expect a substantial demand return, but this could still be years away, with stakeholders at an industry event this week highlighting that investors in the market are now looking more closely at project origination and becoming increasingly selective about the activities they finance.

Voluntary carbon market (VCM) buyers and developers largely remain committed to investing in both nature-based and engineered carbon removals (CDR), according to a range of experts speaking at the Carbon Unbound conference in New York this week.

WWF has announced it will take the Norwegian government to court over its decision to open up areas in the Arctic region for commercial seabed mineral activities.

The High Integrity Forest (HIFOR) investment initiative backed by the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) released on Thursday its methodology to identify and issue units that could fit the nascent biodiversity credit market.

Nature tech solutions have the potential to reduce costs of biodiversity conservation and support the development of financing mechanisms such as voluntary biodiversity credits, though greater collaboration between private and public sectors is needed to scale the market, a report has said.

A Nigerian government agency has invested in a domestic cookstoves manufacturing firm and a carbon offset project developer to increase production of cookstoves and to leverage the credit proceeds, the agency announced Thursday.

Verra has launched a public consultation on a methodology for afforestation, reforestation and revegetation, as well as a tweak to a second related methodology for the project activity, it announced Friday.