Carbon Pulse

The UK government has again tweaked free carbon allowance allocations for heavy industry over the first five years of the country’s ETS, holding back a further 140,000 permits from emitters.

A Canada-based financial services company on Wednesday announced it will purchase carbon removal credits from a Nova Scotia-headquartered firm specialising in decarbonising concrete.

California regulator ARB boosted its compliance offset distribution this reporting period before the Nov. 1 interim cap-and-trade compliance deadline, according to government data published Wednesday, though the year-to-date issuance still lags levels reached in 2021.

EU member states reported that they used 76% of their 2021 ETS auction revenues for climate and energy purposes, the European Commission said in a report published on Wednesday detailing the bloc’s progress on climate policy over the past year.

California regulator ARB has the existing statutory authority to continue its WCI-linked carbon market past 2030, while a simple majority vote from the state's progressive legislature could stave off legal challenges to the agency’s extension of the programme, a law firm has argued.

The first carbon credit auction hosted by Saudi Arabia's sovereign investment fund has dished out 1.4 million units across 15 regional and domestic firms including Aramco, with the state oil company also announcing a $1.5 billion fund to help it reach net zero emissions by 2050.

EUAs extended their rally into a fourth day on Thursday as prices continued to be driven by short covering, though some also suggested utilities were re-entering the market to hedge forward power deliveries.

The real obstacle to overcome for scaling technology-based removals in the voluntary carbon market is the lack of a demand signal rather than the scarcity of supply, according to a senior member of a large project developer speaking to Carbon Pulse.

Spanish utility Iberdrola announced a continued increase in ETS-covered gas generation in its Q3 results on Wednesday as hydro output remained well below both 2021 and 2020 levels, reflective of a wider trend across the region that has prompted a surge in fossil output.

A carbon price of at least $30 per tonne of CO2 would enable Japan to bring forward a phase-out of fossil-fuel fired power generation and accelerate the transition to renewables in the electricity sector, a report released on Wednesday has found.

Nationally determined contributions (NDCs) will reduce global emissions downward relative to previous strategies, though these efforts are insufficient to limit warming to 1.5C by the end of the century with emissions on course to rise by more than 10% between 2010 and 2030, a UN report showed.

Estimated emissions for operating Chinese-financed overseas power plants could cumulatively consume 1.7% of the global carbon budget that gives a 50-50 chance of limiting global warming to 1.5C, a policy brief has found.

A joint initiative to provide an open source metadata system to share information about carbon credits and projects across digital platforms and ease integration of multiple registry systems will go live before the end of the year, it was announced on Wednesday.

Indonesia has finalised and adopted regulations guiding domestic and international carbon trade, results-based payments, and carbon fees, providing some clarity for global emissions traders that have had voluntary offset issuances disrupted in recent months as the rules were under development.

An outspoken Papua New Guinean governor has argued that the moratorium on REDD+ projects for the voluntary market in the country should remain in place until regulations are properly implemented, noting there is still confusion over who is governing carbon credit projects in the country.

Australia’s Carbon Market Institute (CMI) has broadly welcomed the climate-related elements of the federal Labor government’s first budget that was delivered on Tuesday, but has also stated that uncertainty for carbon market players will remain until key policy decisions are made by Canberra to facilitate greater action on climate change.

Not a single global sector is on course to decarbonise in time to meet the Paris Agreement's preferred warming target of 1.5C, with many far from close to the required pathway and some heading in the wrong direction entirely, according to a report published Wednesday.

The former chief scientist tasked with chairing the independent review into Australia’s carbon credit market, Professor Ian Chubb, has outlined what he sees as the main themes coming out of the raft of submissions and research his team is pouring over, but told a conference Wednesday it was too soon to say what the specific outcome of the review will be.

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

The joint venture between a US-based carbon credit originator and its investment firm partner has purchased Michigan forestland to develop a voluntary carbon market project, as the company builds out its portfolio across the country.