Carbon Pulse

Two privately-owned Bulgarian coal-fired plants may have saved around €30 mln in EU ETS obligations by under-declaring verified emissions covered by the EU ETS, according to a media investigation.

Melbourne-based Renewable Energy Hub is launching a new OTC-based trading platform for carbon and clean energy products, it announced Friday, offering a range of compliance and voluntary instruments primarily targeting the Asia-Pacific region.

UK utility Drax notched a 56% year-on-year cut in its ETS-covered generation for H1, after the company had largely drawn down its coal stockpiles.

Italian utility Enel followed other major European generators in posting an uptick in EU ETS-covered thermal generation for H1 on Thursday, in line with an EU-wide rebound following last year's pandemic restrictions.

The US Senate voted to begin debate Tuesday night on a bipartisan infrastructure deal featuring provisions on clean energy, CCS, and hydrogen, but some Democrats called for legislators to go much further than these carbon reduction strategies.

Steelmaker ArcelorMittal has set itself a 2030 greenhouse gas reduction objective across its global operations and raised its European climate target, it said in quarterly results on Thursday.

EUAs reversed initial gains after tracking rising natural gas and power prices in early Thursday trade, amid a generally firmer energy complex heading into the peak holiday season.

China’s new pilot scheme to add carbon to environmental impact assessments will complement the national ETS, with the steel industry set to be the most affected, analysts said Thursday.

A new global cross-stakeholder initiative aims to agree on how companies should use carbon credits and ensure the voluntary carbon market contributes to Paris Agreement goals.

Japan’s Mitsubishi Corp. has taken a 40% stake in an Australian developer of nature-based carbon credits, it announced Thursday, further extending its growing involvement in voluntary emissions markets.

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

California minted almost 1 million new compliance-grade offsets over the past two weeks, but these issuances came as a new West Coast wildfire appeared to impact another existing forestry project registered under the WCI-linked cap-and-trade programme, state data and researchers reported this week.

The EU on Wednesday released its national allocation tables determining free carbon allowance allocations for 2021-25 after several months of delays, revealing quotas of permits to be given to emitters in most of the countries participating in the EU ETS.

The UK government has opened a consultation into proposed amendments to its emissions trading legislation in order to correct “outstanding technical issues identified during the development and legislation of the scheme”.

Brazilian offset developer Biofilica announced its acquisition by a multinational environmental management firm on Tuesday, with the purchase aimed at generating 10 times as many voluntary emissions reductions (VERs) compared to current volumes and expanding into more nature-based project types.

A Texas-based hedge fund opened a RGGI CO2 Allowance Tracking System (COATS) account on Wednesday, with the firm having been linked to two previous speculative accounts under a different name.

Norway’s Equinor on Wednesday defended its plans to extract more oil and gas, fending off analyst questions about whether the company risked legal action over a lack of climate ambition.

Hungary-based airline Wizz Air expects its passenger capacity to reach pre-pandemic levels this summer, it said on Wednesday while criticising Brussels' proposals for an EU-wide tax on jet fuel.

Carbon posted healthy gains in Wednesday morning trade, as a strong auction result coupled with firm energy prices acted to bolster sentiment.

Large oil and gas companies are behind most of the recent increase in demand for Australian carbon credits, which has seen prices rise by more than a quarter this year, according to analysts.