Carbon Pulse

Compliance entities reduced their California Carbon Allowance (CCA) holdings across the board, while financials continued to scoop up V23 CCA and RGGI Allowances (RGAs) this week at the tail end of annual rebalancing activity, according to US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) data published Friday.

California and Quebec will decrease the number of current and advance vintage allowances offered in the jurisdictions’ February cap-and-trade sale as emissions budgets tighten in the linked carbon market, according to an official notice published Friday.

Airlines need to stop their continued underestimation of flight emissions and policies need to be put in place to ensure high quality carbon credits are used, writes Niklas Kaskeala of Compensate.

Dominion Energy will purchase tens of millions of RGGI Allowances (RGAs) before Virginia leaves the cap-and-trade programme at the end of 2023, the company said this week as it petitioned the State Corporation Commission (SCC) to pass these costs along to ratepayers.

Offset project developers are asking California regulator ARB to make several changes to its forest offset protocol to incorporate remote sensing and updated risk reversal ratings, as researchers continued to argue the scheme does not yield credits additional to business-as-usual practice, according to public comments.

The ministers of energy of Western Balkan countries, Ukraine, Moldova, and Georgia announced a new collective pledge to reduce emissions, at the 20th Ministerial Council of the Energy Community on Thursday.

A carbon credit rating agency has upgraded the score of one cookstove project in Uganda and slightly downgraded another in Guatemala in it's latest update.

A data aggregator has launched a ratings page that grades buyers in the voluntary carbon market, with each company graded to reflect their commitment to offsetting in regard to emission reduction strategies and remaining residual emissions.

EUAs were headed for their first weekly loss in a month on Friday as traders sold in advance of political negotiations over the ETS reform package and the expiry of the front-December futures contract on Monday, while energy prices were lower.

Norwegian Air Shuttle will have to pay NOK 400 million (€‎38 mln) for failing to surrender 373,000 carbon allowances for 2020 and 2021, in addition to having to procure the quantity of units it failed to turn in for those years.

Carbon allowances in China’s national emissions trading market dropped over the past week despite a rebound in trading volume, with little regulatory progress seen likely to continue weighing down carbon prices next year.

EU Member States are obligated to spend at least 37% of the Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF, totalling €750 billion in 2018 prices) launched to recover from the Covid pandemic on climate-related issues, but are only devoting a small part of their budgets to nature, a report has found.

South Korea will make a 20% cut in the number of CO2 allowances that will be available at auctions for ETS participants next year compared to 2022, after only being able to sell around half the KAUs it had planned to sell this year.

The US and Australia have signed an agreement at COP15 in Montreal, agreeing to work together to better measure the economic value of nature.

A modest increase in coal demand this year will be enough to reach a new global record high, but its use will plateau after that until at least 2025 as Asian demand proves key to the long term trend in the use of the carbon-intensive fuel, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said on Friday.

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

The spot price for NZUs fell by almost 13% to NZ$75 ($47.66) on Friday in reaction to the government keeping the ETS price settings mostly as is, bar slight adjustments for inflation.

A Canadian-headquartered asset manager chaired by UN climate champion Mark Carney oversaw the clearing of thousands of hectares worth of tropical forest in Brazil and then opted to sell the land rather than reforest it, a campaign group has claimed.

Gabon and Mongolia have allied with conservation collaboration initiative Enduring Earth to protect large areas of land, oceans, and freshwater resources as part of their commitments to meet the 30x30 global natural protection target that is being negotiated at COP15 in Montreal.

California regulator ARB’s Board on Thursday voted to implement the state’s final 2022 Scoping Plan, reaching the culmination of a two-year development process and setting the state on track to become carbon neutral by 2045 and strengthen its suite of climate policies.