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EUAs rose to their highest in more than three months on Monday as traders continued to position ahead of Wednesday's options contract expiry, and watched for signals on the EU's intentions on funding the energy transition ahead of talks on the REPowerEU initiative, while energy prices weakened as gas reserves appeared ample despite the cold snap.

Another €100 billion in public funds will be needed by the EU to address a gas supply gap next winter, the IEA said on Monday in a report presented alongside European Commission President Ursula Von der Leyen that further raises the potential for a fresh raid on EU ETS revenues.

Setting a price corridor would be the most effective way to control the price trajectory of EUAs and reduce the influence of speculators, while changes to the MSR would enable the market to overcome emerging supply challenges amid rising costs of hedging power generation, according to a report published Friday.

It used to be that we celebrated the first snowfall, but that’s been replaced by talk of how to survive the winter without going bankrupt

It’s pretty bracing, this snow, and I don’t mean literally. I’ve been consuming snow-related headlines and news coverage for decades: typically, they’d say, “Winter Wonderland”, followed by “travel chaos”; occasionally, “travel chaos leavened by magical snowy landscape”. Some years people would try to mix it up a bit – “Snowtravaganza” was a low point. You just felt bad for the poor sod who had to live with having written it.

All that has been replaced this year with quite detailed instructions on how to survive the cold without going bankrupt: there was a news segment on the radio about how to turn down the internal temperature of your radiators, if you have a combi boiler. This was not information that lent itself naturally to an aural medium. It was like trying to learn how to remove your own appendix by podcast. Nobody panic – there’s also a website! Except, at the same time, everybody panic: it’s great to take judicious steps to economise in energy-straitened times, but it’s not in any way normal to read experts weighing the relative benefits of wearing a hat indoors and putting mini USB heaters in your shoes.

Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist

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Most venomous creatures store their poison in a gland. Not the stingray, whose venom is in its very tissue

Where do you begin with an animal whose mouth looks like a face, whose face is split into two – half at the top, and half the bottom; who can breathe with either part – from spiracles behind the eyes, or gills behind the mouth; whose teeth are scales; whose scales are teeth-like (denticles)?

When stingrays hunt, they lose sight of their prey – their eyes are bad, and their prey is often underneath them. To find and feel clams, mussels, crabs and fish, the rays rely on electroreceptors in their skin, or, as National Geographic puts it, “special gel-filled pits”. They literally inhale their food, gulping down the electric signal. As they do this, they breathe through the spiracles behind their eyes, which work less efficiently than their gills. Do they get a little light-headed, breathing as if through a towel, feeling the electricity brighten, speed up, then die?

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The UN's shipping branch will adopt a revised greenhouse gas strategy at its next meeting in July, its secretary general announced on Monday as the current negotiating session kicked off in London aiming to craft a detailed plan for decarbonising the sector.

French luxury goods firm Kering and beauty goods retailer L’Occitane have pledged €140 million to a new fund that will mobilise investments from the luxury fashion and beauty industries to protect and restore nature, focusing in particular on empowering women.

The government of China’s biggest coal-producing region has passed provincial regulations for the development of "clean coal", with a special focus on data quality, amid the province's continued coal expansion.

Sequestration of CO2 will be a “key component” for Australia to meet its emissions reduction targets, with nature-based methods already able to provide lower cost and scalable solutions, while engineered technologies such as direct air capture (DAC)  able to make a longer term impact with policy and investment backing to reach commercial maturity, according to a report released on Monday.

Since the sea was enclosed in 1982, it has been ravaged by profiteers – many of whose lobbyists are circling in Montreal

The sea covers 71% of the world’s surface. Two out of every five people live near to or depend on the sea for their livelihood. If the sea were a country, it would be the sixth biggest economy. Ocean-based activities, including offshore energy, shipping, tourism and fishing, account for more than 5% of global GDP, while the World Bank claims that future economic growth will be led by “blue growth”.

Yet the “blue economy” receives little attention from politicians or economists. A waffling section in the first draft of the Cop27 agreement in Egypt, mentioning informal meetings, quickly disappeared. Another United Nations circus is taking place Montreal this week, known as Cop15, which seeks to protect biodiversity. The danger is that ministers and diplomats will again be diverted from the economic causes of the crisis and let capital and finance continue to plunder nature.

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Three campaign groups challenge plans to award up to 130 new licences for exploration

The UK government is facing a fresh challenge in the courts over plans to award up to 130 new licences for North Sea oil and gas exploration, in the latest attempt to stop ministers’ proposed expansion of the country’s fossil fuel production.

Three campaign groups have written to the business secretary, Grant Shapps, explaining the grounds on which they consider the latest offshore oil and gas licensing round to be unlawful. They call for the decision to award the new licences to be reversed, arguing that new oil and gas exploration and development is incompatible with the UK’s own rules and international climate obligations.

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The number of Australian Carbon Credit Units (ACCUs) issued inched downwards in the Clean Energy Regulator’s latest update, as the country’s gas industry has expressed outrage over the government’s plan to cap coal and gas prices in a bid to stave off soaring energy prices.

One of South Korea’s biggest asset managers has penned an MoU with Singapore exchange Climate impact X to broaden its presence in the voluntary carbon market, both internationally and as a provider of credits for Korean buyers.

The directors of an Australian renewable energy company have formed a new carbon project development business with a focus on nature-based projects to generate Australian Carbon Credit Units (ACCUs).  

Aerial photos from reconnaissance mission reveal effort to smuggle excavators into Brazil’s largest Indigenous territory

The surveillance plane eased off the runway and banked west towards the frontline of one of Brazil’s most dramatic environmental and humanitarian crises.

Its objective: a clandestine 120km (75-mile) road that illegal mining mafias have carved out of the jungles of Brazil’s largest Indigenous territory in recent months, in an audacious attempt to smuggle excavators into those supposedly protected lands.

“I call it the Road to Chaos,” said Danicley de Aguiar, the Greenpeace environmentalist leading the reconnaissance mission over the immense Indigenous sanctuary near the Brazilian border with Venezuela.

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No point comparing years any more. Now we just want to know if next year is going to be the big one

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No wonder the fossil fuel industry is playing the blackout card once again. They have lost all moral perspective, and the price cap policy may actually work.

The post Dirty, unreliable and yet more blackout threats: Australia’s charming fossil fuel industry appeared first on RenewEconomy.

The Philippines government will be reviewing the introduction of regulations to facilitate the development of a carbon market in the country, local media reported on Monday.

Researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology develop technique to make paper-thin and lightweight solar cells that can be applied to any surface.

The post “Thinner than human hair:” MIT develops solar cell to turn any surface into power source appeared first on RenewEconomy.

ACCC publishes issues paper to better understand fire risk from Li-ion batteries and how to reduce it, including from e-bikes, EVs and home batteries.

The post ACCC calls for feedback on how to limit fire risk from lithium-ion batteries appeared first on RenewEconomy.