Carbon Pulse

An increasing number of investors are looking to integrate biodiversity into their investment frameworks, according to Morgan Stanley, one of the largest global investment management and financial services companies, describing options for portfolio integration.

Two shipping firms have signed an agreement to launch a joint venture to provide EU ETS compliance services to the sector.

The Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) can have a catalysing effect on the sector to protect and restore nature, providing a framework under which business and finance can begin to redirect capital away from negative activities towards nature-positive investment, experts from financial institutions told a webinar Thursday.

EUA prices posted a robust rally on Friday morning, clawing back much of the week's losses after having settled just above €90 for the four previous sessions, while energy prices ended a week-long run of losses as wind generation was forecast to drop in the coming week.

A well-known carbon analyst has launched a new venture that buys EU Allowances and turns them into digital tokens that can be traded in a virtual secondary market, offering buyers the choice of holding the permits as an appreciating asset or cancelling them to help tighten supply in the world’s largest cap-and-trade market.

Japan’s Toyota Tsusho Corp. is investing in a 100MW solar power project in the Wadi ad-Dawasir region in southwestern Saudi Arabia that will generate carbon credits under the Joint Crediting Mechanism (JCM), and on Friday secured support from the government, which will co-fund the project development.

Spot prices remained shackled to the same level in China’s emissions market over the past week despite an uptick in the trading volume, while reported progress in setting up the nation's new CCER platform in Beijing is sparking some hope that the offset programme might be nearing a return.

A CEO-led group focussed on sustainability released a set of guidelines on Thursday to help companies include alignment with 1.5C criteria to their investment decisions for hydrogen projects.

EU leaders gave the green light to the European Commission’s Green Deal Industrial Plan in the early hours of Friday at a summit in Brussels, seeking to bolster the bloc's global competitiveness on clean technologies as major trading partners scale up support.

Japan's Cabinet on Friday approved its basic GX plan, a 10-year roadmap for the country towards realising decarbonisation, including initial arrangements for a domestic carbon pricing scheme that will transition to a full-fledged emissions trading system from 2033.

The Clean Energy Regulator has issued its lowest number of Australian Carbon Credit Units (ACCUs) in recent months, as the federal government released a consultation that would see its resource minister have sweeping powers over the country’s LNG export market.

A major Japanese conglomerate has teamed up with government, business, and academic partners in the Philippines to establish the nation’s first reforestation-based carbon credit project.

An Australian company looking at a novel approach to restore coral populations has suggested future biodiversity markets could provide the scale needed to save the fast-eroding species where blue carbon markets so far have not.  

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

The spot price for Australian Carbon Credit Units fell A$2, or 5.6%, on Thursday, as the price corrected slightly following flurry of activity in January following the release of the Safeguard Mechanism paper and the results of the Chubb review.

Canada's proposed investment tax credit for clean hydrogen could result in higher emissions and less energy efficiency, according to an open letter to Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland sent on Thursday and signed by 55 environmental organisations and 110 academics.

California Carbon Allowance (CCA) prices reversed from early-week gains in recent days as traded volume dried up ahead of next week’s quarterly auction, while Washington Carbon Allowance (WCA) activity stayed quiet ahead of the first sale for the state’s own cap-and-invest programme later this month.

Germany-based utility RWE, historically the EU’s top corporate emitter, reported a 3.3% rise in its ETS-covered thermal power output for 2022, it said on Thursday, upping its demand for carbon allowances for the second straight year.

A carbon project developer is hoping to urgently scale an approach that simultaneously improves clean drinking water and reduces GHG emissions, noting that corporates will increasingly be on the hook to demonstrate investments in social, as well as climate benefits.

The OECD launched a new working group on Thursday, gathering more than 100 countries to share best practices on how to cut global emissions, and aiming to coordinate policies and provide the data necessary to compare efforts across geographies.