Carbon Pulse

An established REDD+ project developer has highlighted the major challenges standard body Verra is facing in revamping its avoided deforestation methodology, noting that greater engagement with developers could have helped.

A global forestry investment company has begun measuring biodiversity baselines across their assets in anticipation of emerging nature markets, a company representative said Thursday.

Oil and gas companies may have eased off on making carbon neutral claims for commodity shipments, but work to improve methodologies for calculating lifecycle emissions of cargoes is an ongoing task that will be key to the greater use of carbon neutral commodities as part of company decarbonisation strategies going forward, an industry conference was told on Thursday.

China’s environment ministry has released the final ETS allocation plan for the years 2021 and 2022, marginally easing the settings for coal-fired power plants compared to the previous draft while leaving the key issues of offset use and permit carryover unresolved.

Anchoring high-level principles that will underpin voluntary biodiversity credits is needed before more technical details can be ironed out, according to a panel of experts that spoke Wednesday about the barriers to market scale.

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

European Commission Ursula Von der Leyen and lawmakers spoke positively about the bloc's Green Deal Industrial Plan as the MEPs gathered for their monthly meeting in Strasbourg on the eve of the expected publication of proposals for key elements. 

French investment firm Mirova has raised $171 million for its first closing of the Mirova Gigaton Fund, a blended debt finance vehicle that aims to accelerate the energy transition in the developing world.

Verra has halted offset issuances at a soil carbon project in Africa that has been subject to scathing criticism from an environmental group regarding additionality and leakage. 

Two climate disclosure bills which would compel corporations in California to publish their impacts on the environment passed the state's Environmental Quality committee, pushing them forward to the Senate Judiciary Committee.

New Zealand should focus on cutting emissions at home rather than rely on international carbon credits to meet its 2030 NDC, a carbon analyst told a conference on Wednesday.

A US federal judge this week set a trial date for a natural gas-fired power generator’s legal challenge to Washington cap-and-trade regulation, while both the electricity generator and state government requested earlier oral arguments on a motion to dismiss the case.

A California Senate committee on Wednesday endorsed legislation to ratchet up the ambition of the state’s 2030 climate target, but lawmakers are also mulling the future incorporation of measures into the bill that would strengthen the programme’s WCI-linked cap-and-trade system and address environmental policy shortcomings in the Scoping Plan.

A voluntary carbon market (VCM) data aggregator this week published its second corporate buyers guide that ranks firms according to the share of emissions offset, the price per tonne paid, and the average vintage of credits bought, increasing the number of companies covered and better accounting for carbon removal forward agreements.

A Danish ministerial event taking place next week aims to rekindle political interest in the UN climate change negotiations, with a heavy agenda expected over the next nine months for global governments ahead of the COP28 climate talks in the UAE.

European carbon prices were sharply lower in volatile trading amid a persistent "risk-off" mood across markets on Wednesday, as big losses among bank stocks dragged down equity indices in Europe.

A report from a major insurer on quantifying nature loss risk has been critiqued by several stakeholders in the nascent biodiversity crediting market citing poor data and undervaluing the impact of the destruction of species on the economy.

South Korea has established a bulletin board for the transaction of domestic offset units as a service to traders who want to engage in over-the-counter trading but struggle to get their hands on supply.

A city in southwestern India is planning to seek carbon credits for its metro rail system that has been operational for almost six years, and have contracted a large project developer to help guide it through the process.

Institutional investors and an activist group on Wednesday called directors of oil and gas firm Woodside to be held accountable for failing to establish a credible climate strategy, while project developer AgriProve Solutions had nine more soil carbon projects approved by the Clean Energy Regulator.