Carbon Pulse

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

UN climate finance envoy Mark Carney's Taskforce on Scaling Voluntary Carbon Markets (TSVCM) hopes to conclude this summer with a report describing provisional agreement on environmental principles for verified emissions reductions (VERs), but must now confront long-standing issues around the role of REDD+ projects and governance. 

The Canadian federal government can mandate that provinces increase the ambition of their own programmes going forward after the Supreme Court of Canada’s judgement upheld the constitutionality of the federal ‘backstop’ CO2 pricing regime, according to experts. 

India’s power minister shied away from revealing any intentions to set a net zero objective for the country in an IEA high-level summit on Wednesday, while demanding developed nations start considering negative emissions targets.

Germany adopted a regulation on Monday that entitles EU ETS-covered companies to compensation for costs faced under its national emissions trading scheme (nEHS) for transport and heating fuels.

Virginia will not oppose utility Dominion Energy’s rate request to cover RGGI allowance procurements over the next 18 months, while the generator revealed the value of its hedged position in the Northeast cap-and-trade scheme, according to filings released this week.

Asset manager VanEck on Wednesday launched a new ETF focused on companies that generate at least 50% of their revenues from hydrogen projects or have the potential to do so.

President Joe Biden’s administration unveiled a $2 trillion infrastructure plan on Wednesday that would create a clean energy standard for the power sector, allocate funding to electric vehicle charging stations, and jump start research and development for clean technology.

EUAs were little changed by midday on Wednesday giving back early gains following a weaker auction despite an upcoming holiday pause to the sales.

Romania has granted CE Oltenia €241.4 million help cover its 2020 EU ETS obligations, according to an emergency ordinance adopted as the utility’s restructuring is still under EU investigation.

Japan’s environment ministry has launched a review of its Joint Crediting Mechanism (JCM), with a view to making the scheme consistent with the Paris Agreement on issues such as avoiding double counting of carbon credits.

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.