Carbon Pulse

European carbon prices began the week on a positive note as the market rose after Sunday's second round of elections for France's parliament appeared to deal a blow to right-wing parties' hopes of forming a government, but the rally was short-lived and by midday EUAs were again testing support at a key level from last week.

The European Commission pledged to work closely with India to help the country adapt to the incoming Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) fees and introduce its own emissions pricing scheme, during a visit to New Delhi last week. 

An Indian project developer has ventured into the market for carbon credits from enhanced rock weathering (ERW), eyeing projects that generate more credits and at a lower price than other early movers.

The French government put forward its carbon capture, utilisation, and storage (CCUS) strategy on Friday, outlining a roadmap to catch 4-8 million tonnes of CO2 per year by 2030, targeting hard-to-abate sectors of industry across four “CCS valleys”.

A coalition comprising major tech companies and environmental groups in Japan has called on the government to set an aggressive emissions reduction target for its 2035 nationally determined contribution (NDC).

The public body in charge of managing the UK's coal mining legacy has released a nature recovery plan, seeking to include nature-related credits into its financial models by 2026.

Imposing a carbon levy on domestic emitters will likely have limited impact on Taiwan's overall economy, though it remains unclear whether the island will be able to launch its carbon pricing programme next year as planned, according to government meeting documents.

A group of Nordic companies and research institutes have banded together to launch a project aimed at developing a biodiversity credit methodology for the offshore wind sector in the Baltic Sea.

Japan is using its excess volumes of LNG to shape, and in many ways slow down, the energy transition in Southeast Asia, by financing gas infrastructure abroad and promoting transboundary CO2 markets as a decarbonisation solution that critics say is yet-to-be-proven and unrealistic. 

An Australian carbon credit provider has gone through a round of redundancies as part of an organisational restructure, Carbon Pulse has learned.

A Dubai-headquartered fintech firm has teamed up with a Sri Lanka-based project developer to generate and issue biodiversity and oxygen credits within a pilot restoration project in the Belipola private forest.

The UNFCCC is considering repurposing its voluntary offset platform, which is supplied by Kyoto-era credits, in order to support the new carbon credit generation mechanism under the Paris Agreement.

US President Joe Biden's administration is targeting the end of the year for the issuance of highly anticipated draft emissions standards for existing natural gas-fired power plants, according to a biannual regulatory agenda published late Friday that also provided expected timelines on a litany of other planned environmental regulations.

An international proprietary trading firm has seen its European and Asian carbon desks emptied, Carbon Pulse has learned.

The US Forest Service, responsible for stewardship of public forest acreage, defended its timber targets as part of its process to secure funding from Congress, and thus not subject to federal environmental law, in recent updates to a lawsuit filed by environmental groups against the agency.

A Canada-based CO2 removal (CDR) company and researchers from a Nova Scotian university are set to initiate a field experiment this month in Halifax Harbour to test ocean alkalinity enhancement (OAE) as a means of marine CDR.

Stakeholders pushed back on the California regulator’s proposals to trim utility and industrial allocation, force consignment of free allowances, and place limits on permit revenue usage, which would raise utility costs for consumers, in feedback submitted in response to ARB’s cap-and-trade May workshop.

Freshwater wetlands must be included in voluntary carbon market (VCM) methodologies to protect at-risk areas and leverage their outsized carbon sequestration potential, according to a Chilean environmental consultant speaking to Carbon Pulse on the sidelines of the Latin America Climate Summit in Cartagena last week.

Private companies are needed to help destroy ozone-depleting substances (ODS) but should align closely with multilateral governance bodies, a Finnish negotiator under the Montreal Protocol told Carbon Pulse, noting that Finland does not have an official position on the voluntary carbon market (VCM) specifically, as countries prepare to meet next week.

An upcoming European Commission guidance document designed to help the 27 EU member states interpret the legal definition of 'waste heat' is likely to create some conflict when released later this month, as the waste incineration sector recently entered the EU's Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS).