Carbon Pulse

A group of staffers at the Shanghai Environment and Energy Exchange have been living in the office for nearly a month to ensure the Chinese carbon market operates as normal while the entire city is locked down due to a Covid-19 outbreak.

Hong Kong has set out plans to establish itself as the hub that will bring together the international carbon market and that of China, but the pathway to success is tricky and heavily reliant on decision-makers in Beijing.

As Clean Prosperity’s Net-Zero Pathways Research Associate, your main area of focus will be to support a national-level modelling research study. Clean Prosperity’s net-zero modelling research is a new flagship initiative that will help inform credible climate policy directions for Canada to 2050.

Spanish utility Iberdrola marked a 112% year on year rise in CCGT power output covered by the EU ETS in Q1 2022, with the gas-fired output soaring to make up for unusually low hydro supply amid drought-like conditions in Iberia, the utility said in quarterly results on Wednesday.

The failure of CCS at the Gorgon offshore gas and LNG project to capture enough CO2 to meet operator Chevron’s own targets has placed doubt on the efficacy of the oil and gas industry’s reliance on the technology to curtail emissions, a report released on Wednesday has claimed.

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

In this role, you will support the work of two staff leads in the cap-and-invest Auctions and Market Unit. One staff lead is focused on allowance trading and entity education, and the other lead is focused on allowance auctions.

A collection of Pennsylvania coal-fired power plant owners and labour organisations on Monday filed a court challenge to prevent the state’s newly published RGGI-modelled cap-and-trade regulation from taking effect, arguing the programme is an unconstitutional tax and falls outside existing authority.

 Canada needs to increase its stringency requirements for subnational CO2 pricing systems for industry and foster better public reporting practices to help the country hit its 2030 emissions target, according to a report released Tuesday by the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development.

The Bahamas has proposed legislation that will chart a course for the Caribbean nation’s participation in the voluntary carbon market, a move that follows other legal frameworks emerging from host countries and raises questions on how these play into the unregulated market’s norms.

The price of nature-based carbon credits could rise to as high as $15 in the voluntary market by year-end, according to analysts on Tuesday who added that units generated by renewables and energy efficiency projects will fall or remain flat under the weight of a supply glut.

Pressure is mounting on an influential non-profit group to drop its classification of burning waste as an “alternative fuel” in cement kilns, with environmental campaigners claiming that millions of dollars meant for climate mitigation will instead prop up one of the world’s most climate-polluting industries.

Plans to launch a new EU carbon market covering buildings and transport are likely to be rebuffed by European Parliamentarians in favour of even sharper reforms of the current ETS, a senior lawmaker said on Tuesday just three weeks before a key parliamentary committee is due to forge its position.

EU lawmakers are weighing up the possibility of introducing limits on speculative trading in the EU ETS, though they acknowledge that there is a role for intermediaries to service compliance participants in the carbon market, a leading MEP said on Tuesday.

Over-the-counter online trading platform Emsurge Carbon Marketplace has originated its first deal, it announced Tuesday, the latest provider seeking to facilitate trade in the fast-growing voluntary carbon market.

A Singapore-headquartered bank has teamed up with a regulated digital exchange to offer tokenised carbon credits that the bank’s customers can use to offset their greenhouse gas emissions.

EU ETS trading volume rose year-on-year by 13% in 2021 to an all-time record as auction participation remained stable and volatility further increased from 2020, according to a report published on Tuesday.

EUA prices consolidated early gains on Tuesday morning amid a weaker energy complex, despite a leading MEP raising the possibility that speculative trading in the EU ETS may be limited under reforms being worked out by the European Parliament's environment committee.

MPs with Australian Coalition government partner the Nationals Party are undercutting the country’s net-zero emissions by 2050 commitment made last year, while confusion remains about how Labor’s expanded Safeguard Mechanism would work.

South Korea on Tuesday announced a $8-billion plan to cut carbon at one of the facilities in its emissions trading scheme, as it is quadrupling its annual spending in support of ETS entities.