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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 Minnesota budget language to study a clean transportation fuel standard.

Two more companies have agreed to drop their climate neutrality claims on certain products they sell this week, opting to settle rather than face rulings by German courts in cases brought by an NGO alleging that the carbon credits backing the claims lack sufficient credibility.

The first futures contract for California Carbon Offsets (CCOs) with direct environmental benefits to the state (DEBs) and no invalidation risk changed hands on Nodal Exchange Friday morning, according to a press release from product developer IncubEx, coming in at the steepest price point yet for WCI-eligible credits.

As drought beacomes the norm, creative solutions must be found to deal with a new, parched reality

In April, Spain’s prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, suggested that severe drought would become “one of the central political and territorial debates of our country in the coming years”. That stark warning surely applies to southern Europe as a whole, as the prospect of another summer crisis looms, following a disastrously dry winter.

An absence of melting snow from the Alps has left Italy’s Po River as shallow as during last year’s searingly hot summer. In January and February, France recorded the highest number of rain-free days since records began, and water restrictions are in place in the Pyrénées-Orientales region. About 90% of mainland Portugal is suffering from drought, judged to be severe in one-fifth of the country. In Spain, from Catalonia to Andalucía, unseasonable heat has contributed to reservoirs drying up and a disastrous drop in olive oil production. By the middle of this month, southern Spain had received barely 30% of expected rainfall. As temperatures continue to rise, and Europe warms faster than the global average, drought across vast swathes of territory is simply becoming the norm.

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Pressure is mounting on Nigeria to start its carbon credit scheme with the nation's lawmakers this week calling for the federal government to act immediately following a motion of urgent public concern. 

Signs of recovery for EU steel are likely to remain restricted to the short-term, analysts told Carbon Pulse, with macroeconomic headwinds and energy cost risk, as well as long-term decarbonisation policy, seen keeping sectoral demand and therefore emissions limited.

Producers accuse government of failing to tackle pollution after ‘very high’ levels of bacteria found

“Very high” levels of E coli found in oysters and mussels have led to the closure of 11 shellfish production zones in Cornwall.

In an email seen by the Guardian and Watershed Investigations, the Cornwall Port Health Authority (CPHA) told food business operators they “must not collect the affected animals from this area by any method. It is unsuitable for their production for health reasons and has been temporarily closed.”

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Findings from soil samples in New Hampshire ‘pretty disturbing’, expert says, and raise questions on food and water contamination

Background levels of toxic PFAS “forever chemicals” in the ground and air may be much higher than previously thought, federal testing of spatially random soil samples from across New Hampshire suggests.

The analysis found high levels of PFAS in all 100 shallow soil samples, which were taken from undisturbed land not close to known polluters. The chemicals are thought to largely have gotten there through the air, and the study, along with recent EU research, suggests similar levels of soil and air contamination throughout the world.

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European carbon prices stabilised on Friday morning as selling pressure eased after a week that has seen prices drop by more than 8%, while energy prices extended their losses for a fifth day amid sustained selling with demand still lower than expected.

Ten of broadcaster’s 31 hosts made on-air statements in 2022 rejecting or challenging scientific consensus

Almost a third of presenters on GB News have used their platform to cast doubt on the scientific consensus on climate breakdown, according to an analysis.

Ten of the broadcaster’s 31 presenters made statements on air in 2022 rejecting or challenging widely accepted scientific findings about how humans are affecting the climate, and the role the climate crisis plays in extreme weather events.

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Danish renewable energy firm Orsted and UK-based marine consultants Bluedot Associates have teamed up to develop a biodiversity framework to apply to the planned offshore floating wind power leasing round the UK is planning in the Celtic Sea.

Forrest says he made no final offer for Sun Cable and intends to focus instead on his own 20GW renewable pipeline.

The post Forrest says he did not bid for Sun Cable, has his own 20GW to build appeared first on RenewEconomy.

Wind and rain bring island to a standstill but eye replacement cycle fortuitously weakens it temporarily

Earlier this week, Typhoon Mawar whipped up a storm in western Micronesia as the category 4 storm came close to landfall on the island of Guam. Starting out as a tropical depression over the weekend, Mawar rapidly deepened and intensified over the following couple of days, almost reaching category 5 by Tuesday evening. Wind gusts peaked at 155mph (250km/h), briefly making Mawar a super typhoon about 100 miles south-east of the US island territory.

In a stroke of luck an eyewall replacement cycle occurred overnight, hours before the then super typhoon was due to reach Guam. The cycle involves the slight degradation of the storm’s structure as a new eye develops around the old eye. Consequentially, the storm’s intensity weakened temporarily while simultaneously spreading strong winds over a larger area. Mawar’s winds dropped to a sustained speed of 140mph as the typhoon brushed the northern edge of Guam at about 7am local time (2200 BST) Had Mawar made landfall, it would have been the first category 4 typhoon to do so since Typhoon Pamela in 1976.

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The best of this week’s wildlife photographs, including a crab spider, a glass frog and a curious snow leopard

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Allowance prices in China’s carbon market inched down marginally over the past week with a plunge in trading volume, while the offset market saw relatively sustained liquidity amid renewed market confidence.

An Indigenous carbon industry network has called for clearer rules for how co-benefits on carbon credits sold in the market are labelled, and that carbon method design must value Indigenous intellectual property rights.

The European Parliament is set to back measures to force EU companies to disclose their carbon footprint and take steps to reduce it as part of corporate sustainability requirements to be voted on next week.

Devon cattle stand in for extinct aurochs in project aimed at protecting precious species such as sand lizards

The mighty aurochs have gone, as have the tarpan horses and the wild boars, but modern-day substitutes have been drafted in to recreate a large open “savannah” on heathland in Dorset.

Instead of aurochs, considered the wild ancestor of domestic cattle, 200 red Devon cattle are to be found roaming the Purbeck Heaths, while Exmoor ponies are stand-ins for the tarpan horses and curly coated Mangalitsa pigs are doing the sort of rooting around that boars used to excel at here.

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The solution is not more fields but better, more compact, cruelty-free and pollution-free factories

No issue is more important, and none so shrouded in myth and wishful thinking. The way we feed ourselves is the key determinant of whether we survive this century, as no other sector is as damaging . Yet we can scarcely begin to discuss it objectively, thanks to the power of comforting illusions.

Food has the extraordinary property of turning even the most progressive people into reactionaries. People who might accept any number of social and political changes can respond with fury if you propose our diets should shift. Stranger still, there’s a gulf between ultraconservative beliefs about how we should eat and the behaviour of people who hold such beliefs. I have heard people cite a rule formulated by the food writer Michael Pollan – “Don’t eat anything your great-great-great-grandmother wouldn’t recognise as food” – while eating a diet (Thai one day, Mexican the next, Mediterranean the day after) whose range of ingredients no one’s great-great-great-grandmother would recognise, and living much the better for it.

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If we put green hydrogen plants next to green iron and steelmaking, we can clean up steelmaking and boost the hydrogen industry. Changlong Wang, Research fellow, Monash University Andrew Feitz, Director, Geoscience Australia Marcus Haynes, Computational Geoscientist, Geoscience Australia Stuart Walsh, Senior lecturer, Monash University Zhehan Weng, Research scientist, Geoscience Australia Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.