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Food and garden rubbish is sorted and then cooked to produce rich compost at this waste management centre

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Ash Turner sizes up a four-metre-high, 60-tonne mound of food waste and garden rubbish and points out the problematic interlopers amid the grass clippings, hedge trimmings, mango seeds, calla lilies and biodegradable bags full of food.

“So that’s a biodegradable bag … that’s not … that’s oversized,” he says, pointing to a tree stump that will be too big to be broken down by the various machines in the plant.

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European carbon prices were modestly weaker at midday on Friday amid some end-of-week profit taking that also pushed natural gas prices down, despite a shift in power generation economics that analysts said puts coal above gas for the next three months.

Cop29 is taking place in a country whose economy has long been dependent on its oil reserves

Oil runs deep in Azerbaijan, the host country of this year’s UN climate summit. Just 30 minutes south-west of the Cop29 conference centre lies the site of the world’s first industrially drilled oil well, opened in 1846.

Just metres away sit a handful of operating oil wells, nodding away. The Guardian spoke to an employee of Azerbaijan’s state-owned oil and gas company, Socar, who was working on one of the wells. Asked what oil meant for Azerbaijan, the 47-year-old worker said: “Too much!”

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A late-stage presidency text for the Mitigation Work Programme (MWP) has eliminated any mention of the Paris Agreement's global warming limit goals, and repeated its exclusion of ‘fossil fuels’ or ‘renewables’ language, reversing course on last year’s landmark COP28 Global Stocktake (GST). 

Draft text under fire as poor nations wanted more of the money to come directly from developed countries

• Cop29 climate summit – live updates

Developing countries have reacted angrily to an offer of $250bn a year in finance from the rich world – considerably less than they are demanding – to help them tackle the climate crisis.

The offer was contained in the draft text of an agreement published on Friday afternoon at the Cop29 climate summit in Azerbaijan, where talks are likely to carry on past a 6pm deadline.

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What it means for the global climate effort if another superpower comes to the fore, just as Trump steps back

A Mexican state has partnered with a Franco-Mexican environmental credit company to kickstart a programme aimed at advancing the local biodiversity and carbon market.

Ongoing work to finalise outstanding rules for certain tax credits within the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) will be completed before the end President Biden's term, a top US Department of Energy (DOE) official said this week, although work on final rules for other credits may be left in the hands of the new Trump administration.

CO2 allowance prices in China’s carbon market remained stable over the past week, with a surge in the weekly trading volume as compliance demand continues to grow.

Levels in people’s blood for 37 chemicals linked to health issues declined after they were designated under Prop 65

California’s nation-leading restrictions on toxic chemicals in consumer products reduced the population’s body levels for many dangerous compounds linked to cancer, birth defects, reproductive harm and other serious health issues.

New peer-reviewed research showed levels in residents’ blood for 37 chemicals the authors analyzed had declined after the substances were designated under Proposition 65, which regulates toxic chemicals in consumer goods.

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A Tokyo-listed financial firm has teamed up with a project developer with an increasing presence in Southeast Asia to pursue the creation of nature-based carbon credits.

A Paraguayan agricultural conglomerate has partnered with a multinational developer to launch a livestock farming project that participants claim will be the largest soil carbon initiative in Latin America.

Germany plans to ringfence an annual €1.1 billion to fund biodiversity conservation starting next year, a government official announced at the ongoing COP29 UN climate summit in Azerbaijan.

Swedish maker of battery cells for electric vehicles says it has enough cash to support operations for only a week

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Northvolt, the Swedish maker of battery cells for electric vehicles, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the US, dealing a blow to Europe’s hopes that its most developed battery player would reduce western carmakers’ reliance on Chinese rivals.

Northvolt said it had enough cash to support operations for only about a week and it had secured $100m (£80m) in new financing for the bankruptcy process. It said operations would continue as normal during the bankruptcy.

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Negotiations continue amid disputes over climate finance goals and previous commitments on transitioning from fossil fuels

Cop29 will run well into overtime, WWF has said, as delegates from nearly 200 nations awaited a fresh draft of a summit deal on Friday afternoon.

Decisions at the annual UN climate talks are made by consensus, meaning that it is possible for a small number of objectors to easily hold up commitments.

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South Korea has proposed a ten-year roadmap for the creation of a carbon-free energy ecosystem, which the government said can bring an economic effect worth 59 trillion won ($42 billion).

Labour inherited a dire situation that needed desperate change – but powerful lobbies make any tax reform near-impossible

That was a state-of-the-nation image, those thousands of farmers in Whitehall protesting about inheritance tax (IHT). Their little inheritors on toy tractors could hardly have offered a better portrait of a Britain where even modest reforms of wildly irrational tax reliefs are near-impossible. The country loves Old MacDonald and detests IHT.

This is a symbol of the great malaise those same contrary voters feel about the profound unfairness in this most unequal of countries. Few think it’s OK for the top 1% to own almost a quarter of all wealth, or the top 0.1% to take about 60 times more income than their population share, while we are living through the greatest decline in living standards since records began.

Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist

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The best of this week’s wildlife photographs from around the world

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Petrostate’s rebuke comes as Saudi Arabia and allies try to derail transition promise made at climate talks last year

• Cop29 climate summit – live updates

The world must stand behind a historic resolution made last year to “transition away from fossil fuels”, the United Arab Emirates has said, in a powerful intervention into a damaging row over climate action.

The petrostate’s stance came as a sharp rebuke to its neighbour and close ally Saudi Arabia, which had been trying to unpick the global commitment at UN climate talks in Azerbaijan this week.

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