Carbon Pulse

New Zealand allowances on Friday closed above NZ$38 ($27.18) for the first time since before the March auction, rising after ETS participants earlier this week finalised 2020 compliance and the NZ$35 fixed price option became a thing of the past.

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

The Virginia State Corporation Commission (SCC) should accept Dominion Energy’s nearly $168 million rate request to cover RGGI compliance costs, but the state agency may want to consider requiring further analysis on the utility’s long-term CO2 trends, according to a document filed this week.

California Carbon Allowance (CCA) prices surged on the secondary market this week after speculators acquired an all-time high at the Q2 WCI auction, while RGGI allowances (RGAs) dithered ahead of their own quarterly sale.

EUAs fell towards €50 on Thursday, with prices breaking out of a technical range and continuing their retreat from last month's record levels.

A linkage with the California-Quebec cap-and-trade system is essential for Washington state’s newly approved carbon programme, the leading legislator behind the policy said Wednesday, as he also minimised the impact of Governor Jay Inslee’s (D) partial vetoes of the underlying climate bill.

Verra is considering developing a new independent agroforestry methodology in our VCS Program, given this limited agroforestry project activity. However, before initiating development, Verra needs to research existing methodologies with expert input to determine whether a new agroforestry methodology is actually needed.

The EU’s proposed carbon border adjustment mechanism (CBAM) will look like a ‘notional’ ETS and will give importers a transition phase to alleviate their burden, according to draft documents that give little indication over how the measure will interact with free allocation of carbon allowances to industry.

Korean carbon allowances continued to fall in Thursday trade, hitting their lowest since Feb. 2016 despite the government abandoning plans to auction millions of permits next week.

Australia’s Clean Energy Regulator handed out 120,000 carbon credits to waste tech firm Global Renewables in its latest issuance round, while a report warned Woodside and BHP’s Scarborough to Pluto LNG project could create almost 1.7 billion tonnes of CO2e emissions over its lifetime.

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

A Land of Lincoln-headquartered financial firm opened a second RGGI account this week ahead of the Q2 auction, with the registration marking the first new speculative account in the power sector cap-and-trade programme in more than two months, CO2 Allowance Tracking System (COATS) data showed.

The “perfect storm” of bullish factors that drove EU carbon prices to a record high last month has lost momentum, analysts said Wednesday, but warned that any correction would likely be temporary.

Analysts at Morgan Stanley have nudged up their long-term EU carbon price forecasts, but they are expecting allowances to pull back during the second half of this year.

EUAs lost nearly 2% on Wednesday as the market again struggled to absorb the day's two auctions, though they avoided the sharp sell-off triggered by the UK's inaugural sale two weeks earlier, while trading data on UKA holdings was published for the first time ever.

US biofuel credit (RIN) values rose this week on the back of higher agricultural commodity prices, while market participants questioned whether other refiners besides a Delta Air Lines subsidiary were trimming back on Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) purchases amid near-record high levels.

The European Commission and Bill Gates’ climate venture Breakthrough Energy Catalyst will mobilise $1 billion (€820 million) to scale up clean energy technology, the EU’s executive announced on Wednesday.

The upcoming revision of the EU’s renewable energy directive will not include any measures to promote low-carbon fuels, a European Commission senior official said Wednesday, partly as a result of pressure from green groups and progressive EU lawmakers.

The Q2 RGGI auction is expected to settle closer to the secondary market after notching a wide discount in March, with some market participants foreseeing the quarterly sale settling at a premium due to deferred compliance demand.

The head of European power and carbon analytics at ICIS is leaving for a boutique consultancy, Carbon Pulse has learned.