Carbon Pulse

The Beijing municipal government will auction one million carbon allowances under its pilot emissions trading scheme in November, with a price floor for the sale to be set later.

Hopes of tangible progress at the approaching UN climate summit COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan, are at risk of being quashed by pro-fossil fuel interests and signs of government corruption, according to a report by Transparency International (TI) released Thursday.

Brazil’s Federal Public Prosecutor’s office (MPF) on Tuesday called upon state courts to decline three carbon project cases in favour of federal jurisdiction, in the name of addressing carbon markets questions of national consequence.

California has reached an agreement with an airlines trade organisation to scale the state’s sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) supply to 200 million gallons (757 million litres) by 2035, regulator ARB said Tuesday.

Experts outlined during a Wednesday webinar the potential for so-called "transition" carbon credits to facilitate the energy transition, but noted that challenges remain in the ongoing development of the nascent asset class.

A group of ministers from 20 countries in the Global South have published a statement seeking urgent action to boost biodiversity financing for developing countries, while flagging issues with the global fund intended to support them. 

A special emergency session on coral reefs at the UN biodiversity talks in Colombia on Wednesday urgently called for increased funding for reef protection, with a handful of governments and philanthropies putting up an initial $150 million for a global fund.

A London-based research institute and a carbon market data provider have unveiled an interactive tool to provide transparency to monitoring, reporting, and verifying (MRV) protocols for carbon removal (CDR), the two organisations announced on Wednesday.

A CO2 battery technology company has signed a supply contract with a long-duration energy storage project being developed by a Wisconsin utility with US Department of Energy funding.

A US CO2 removals (CDR) startup announced on Wednesday its oversubscribed round of $5.3 million in seed funding, which will scale the firm’s efforts to remove CO2 from wastewater systems.

The UK will introduce a Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) in 2027 for the six sectors it deemed to be most at risk of carbon leakage, down from eight initially proposed, the government said on Wednesday.

Establishing a carbon price of $25 per tonne of captured CO2 could transform Brazil’s Amazon rainforest into one of the world’s largest natural sinks, countering emissions at a far lower cost than current carbon capture technologies, according to a study published by a major international financial institution.

A group of over 20 organisations on Wednesday launched a coalition to promote bioeconomy across the Amazon region, looking at the biodiversity credit market as a possible means to scale financing.

Saudi Arabia has global ambitions for its soon-to-launch carbon credit exchange, and is aiming for the platform to compete with the CBL exchange that currently dominates voluntary carbon market trades, the CEO of the country’s state-backed VCM company told Carbon Pulse on Wednesday.

A strong outcome for a new global climate finance goal is possible at COP29 in Baku, with negotiators coalescing around the scale of finance required, though the nitty gritty of where that capital should come from and which countries should contribute is still up in the air, experts said on Wednesday.

The World Bank Group's International Finance Corporation (IFC) is failing to enforce its own greenhouse gas emission requirements with clients, which already fall short of what is needed to meet the Paris Agreement's 1.5C temperature goal, the finance institution's ombudsman warned.

The densely forested west African country of Liberia is looking to harvest Internationally Transferred Mitigation Outcomes (ITMOs) under Article 6.2 of the Paris Agreement after signing a letter of engagement with the Coalition of Rainforest Nations (CfRN), it was announced Wednesday.

Governments at the ongoing COP16 biodiversity summit must ramp up their efforts to break the deadlock on the toughest issues under discussion, as talks still hang in the balance with only two days to go, the UN secretary-general told a press conference on Wednesday.

EU carbon allowance prices fell back on Wednesday amid a wider retreat in energy markets, as weekly positioning data showed speculative players had cut their net short position in carbon significantly, easing the upward pressure on prices, while investment funds continued to add length in natural gas.

Many companies importing goods covered by the EU’s carbon tax will fail to report their actual emissions data in time for the European Commission Thursday deadline - as they struggle to navigate difficult reporting requirements, inconsistencies, and flaws in the policy, according to consultancies and businesses.