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New York government agencies on Friday announced a series of webinars next month to solicit initial input on crafting the state’s cap-and-invest regulation, as it also disclosed the rough process for completing the rulemaking and said it will consider the design of existing North American economy-wide carbon markets.

A summary of legislative, regulatory, and policy action on carbon, clean fuel standard, and clean energy markets at the US federal and subnational levels this week, including North Carolina’s Senate passing a budget that would block a RGGI-modelled cap-and-trade system, Colorado regulators considering a market-based climate programme for industrial emitters, and New York lawmakers advancing clean fuel standard legislation to the Senate floor.

Producers increased California Carbon Allowance (CCA) holdings as permit prices dipped ahead of the WCI Q2 auction, while financial entities sold down their CCA net length but added to RGGI Allowance (RGA) holdings, data from the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) showed Friday.

The US Department of Justice (DOJ) on Friday sentenced a Los Angeles resident to 40 months in prison after he pled guilty to wire fraud by selling fraudulent biofuel credits under the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS).

Offset standard manager and developer Verra on Friday said it will launch carbon credit labels to signify emissions removals and compatibility with the Paris Agreement, while ditching designations for other project attributes.

Colombia’s High Court has selected to hear a lawsuit from an Indigenous group against a REDD+ project within their territory in the Amazon rainforest, potentially setting a precedent for drawing legal limits on similar voluntary carbon market (VCM) projects in the country, a media alliance reported Thursday.

Wildlife and environment groups condemn plan promising renewable energy for 600,000 homes

Plans for a renewable energy tidal barrier linking Norfolk and Lincolnshire have sparked fierce debate between scientists, wildlife charities and a port company CEO who is leading the project.

Entrepreneur James Sutcliffe, who has managed and advised port companies in Sierra Leone and Bangladesh, has now set his sights on the Wash, which is the sea, mudflats and salt marsh between the two counties.

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Ghana and Thailand are frontrunners among major carbon credit-supplying nations in the Global South in taking steps to enable international emissions trade under the UN Paris Agreement, according to a report published on Friday detailing progress among the selected 20 countries.

Institutional investors need a rate of return on parity with top quartile private equity to overcome the risks associated with pumping money into the voluntary carbon market (VCM), a finance company boss told Carbon Pulse on Friday.

Tanzania has signed an MoU with a Singapore-registered holding company that was incorporated just six weeks ago to develop what could be by far the biggest carbon credit project yet in Africa, with sources telling Carbon Pulse that the government has other similar agreements akin to Zimbabwe's controversial new approach that it has lined up with foreign investors.

Groundbreaking analysis by One Earth is first to quantify economic burden caused by individual companies

The world’s top fossil fuel companies owe at least $209bn in annual climate reparations to compensate communities most damaged by their polluting business and decades of lies, a new study calculates.

BP, Shell, ExxonMobil, Total, Saudi Arabia’s state oil company and Chevron are among the largest 21 polluters responsible for $5.4tn (£4.3tn) in drought, wildfires, sea level rise, and melting glaciers among other climate catastrophes expected between 2025 and 2050, according to groundbreaking analysis published in the journal One Earth.

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Proponents of engineered carbon removals have questioned the impartiality of a UN document published this week to help prepare for the next round of talks to shape a new global carbon crediting mechanism, fearing the divisive text will further slow progress.

A man has been filmed pushing Just Stop Oil protesters to the ground as they marched down Mansell Street in east London. In the footage shared on social media, the man can be seen shoving protesters, ripping away banners and grabbing one person's phone before throwing it away. The activist group held two slow marches in Cannon Street and Tower Hill on Friday morning. A Met spokesperson said the force was 'aware of an incident in which a member of the public appears to have remonstrated' with protesters before police arrived. A spokesperson for Just Stop Oil said: 'The disruption we are seeing on British streets is nothing compared to what's coming if we do not stop licensing new oil, gas and coal'

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A shift in supermarkets’ attitudes and a new judicial review could at last make us face up to this blot on our moral conscience

It’s been more than 15 years since my show Hugh’s Chicken Run exposed the treatment of the UK’s most farmed animal. The month after it aired, sales of factory-farmed chickens plummeted and free-range birds flew off the shelves as the public began to contemplate the short and brutal lives of animals they had seen only when headless, plucked and smothered in clingfilm.

The programme was broadcast on Channel 4 to millions of viewers, and I hoped it would spark a nationwide revolt against the “two for a fiver” birds in supermarket fridges, the insultingly low price for which could only be achieved by systematic cruelty. I had hoped that beaming footage of these abused chickens into people’s living rooms might make them think twice about their dinner, and shop differently for ever.

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall is a food and cookery writer, broadcaster and campaigner

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European carbon prices were poised to record a second successive weekly gain on Friday after four weeks of declines in April, as the market appeared to gain confidence amid a wider risk-on mood even amid the prospect of the regular daily auction programme resuming next week.

Japan is unlikely to meet its Paris Agreement emissions pledge based on its current policies, analysts have said, as activists worldwide on Friday protested the country's fossil fuel dependence while G7 leaders gather for their annual summit in Hiroshima.

China this week released technical regulations and requirements for three types of blue carbon methodologies, as the world’s biggest-emitting nation gears up efforts to deploy nature-based solutions to help meet its climate commitments.

The effort to stay below 1.5C needs to be a battle people feel we can win. They must sound the alarm, and make sure politicians listen

The end of the world is nigh, again. And as usual, it’s being greeted largely with a shrug. Perhaps you felt a prick of unease as you scrolled the headlines, or half listened over breakfast to some radio debate about the fact that sometime in the next four years the planet is likely to breach the 1.5C rise in global temperature that we have long been told is the tipping point to avoid. (Although this time the breach should be only temporary, the World Meteorological Organisation report stresses that it still takes us into uncharted waters, and if nothing changes the world is likely to cross this dangerous threshold more and more often in future.)

Perhaps you even felt rage or frustration that it’s taking everyone else so long to wake up. But the chances are that most people will have forgotten it by lunchtime. YouGov’s regular tracker poll finds Britons are still more worried about immigration, which almost a third consider the single most important issue currently facing the country, than about climate and the environment.

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The best of this week’s wildlife photographs, including a rare monk seal, nesting gannets and lurking alligator

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