Carbon Pulse

The 215 facilities covered by Australia’s Safeguard Mechanism emitted 143 MtCO2e in FY2019-20, but only a handful of smaller installations had to surrender offsets to meet their targets, according to Clean Energy Regulator data.

The European Commission may have overestimated the costs of increasing the EU’s climate target by 2030 to at least 55% below 1990 levels, according to a report released Wednesday that could support EU lawmakers in their push for an even more ambitious goal.

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

The British Columbia government on Tuesday began its consultation for its revised forest carbon offset protocol (FCOP), coming six years after the province repealed the methodology.

Investors networks are increasingly adding interim targets and flexibility into frameworks to evaluate the validity of corporate net zero commitments, building on a decade of trial and error from the no deforestation movement, experts said.

Six general market participants opened Compliance Instrument Tracking Service System (CITSS) accounts over Q1 2021, while more than a dozen accounts tied to offset projects shuttered in the WCI-linked cap-and-trade scheme, data released by California regulator ARB on Tuesday showed.

California Carbon Offsets (CCOs) with direct environmental benefits to the state (DEBs) are expected to be undersupplied in the latter half of this decade, with premiums slated to rise as market participants anticipate forthcoming shortages, analysts said during a webinar on Tuesday.

The ICAO Council this month upgraded the Qatar-based Global Carbon Council (GCC) to supply units for the international aviation offsetting scheme CORSIA, while the UN body also extended the eligibility dates for one already-approved programme.

Governments have made some progress on pricing carbon from energy use, but the values are still well below estimates of the real cost to the planet, according to OECD analysis published on Tuesday.

EUAs rose for a third straight day on Tuesday as another strong auction continued to stoke bullish sentiment, while an analyst readout of early EU ETS data suggested emissions dropped by less than expected last year.

California Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS) credits continued to fade this week to levels not seen since last spring, while market participants noted several reasons for a lack of trades further out on the curve in recent months.

The EU’s post-pandemic recovery fund could be spent better as many national plans have “missed opportunities” for low-carbon investments, a Brussels-based green group said on Tuesday.

South Africa's government has proposed to tighten its 2030 emissions target by almost a third as part of a revised Paris Agreement pledge that sets out intentions for the export of correspondingly-adjusted carbon credits.

More than 2,200 power companies covered by China’s national emissions trading scheme will have to surrender allowances for their 2019 and 2020 CO2 emissions by Dec. 31, the government said Tuesday.

China’s Ministry of Ecology and the Environment (MEE) on Tuesday released draft legislation that aims to write the national ETS into law, a move that would bolster the scheme’s authority and enable the government to hand out stricter penalties for non-compliance.

Indonesia has launched a trial emissions trading scheme covering 80 coal-fired power plants that initially will run until August, according to the energy and mineral resources ministry.

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

The Canadian environment ministry announced on Monday it will stand down the federal ‘backstop’ output-based pricing system (OBPS) in Ontario in favour of a provincially-run scheme from next year, leaving industrial emitters in the country’s most populous jurisdiction to face their third CO2 pricing system in six years.

Morgan Stanley has raised its near-term outlook for EU carbon prices to above €50 on “positive” political signals and continued inflow of new investor capital into the market.

Rising US vehicle miles travelled (VMT) this summer and build-out of renewable diesel (RD) capacity in the coming years could alleviate pressure on RIN prices under the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS), analysts with a major US investment bank said Monday.