Feed aggregator

EUAs rose for the sixth time in seven days as buying once again drove the market to a new three-month high, while energy prices gave back some early gains as several EU countries called for a more dynamic natural gas price-capping mechanism than that which was proposed by the Commission in November.

The EU's flagship Fit for 55 climate plan is set to outsource deforestation and sacrifice carbon storage and biodiversity in Europe in an effort to drive bioenergy expansion, according to a paper published in a research journal that points out one amendment under consideration could reduce this risk.  

As participants arrive in Montreal to negotiate this decade’s targets for protecting biodiversity, two themes are getting the lion’s share of attention

After more than two years of delays, Cop15, the once-in-decade global biodiversity summit, is about to begin. More than 10,000 participants from across the planet will start arriving in Montreal at the weekend to negotiate crucial goals for protecting biodiversity.

There has been a coordinated push behind some targets, namely from a group of countries that want to protect 30% of land and sea for nature (30x30) by the end of the decade. The idea of “nature positive” is another theme being promoted in the pre-Cop15 rhetoric from NGOs and governments.

Continue reading...

Opponents of meaningful action are trying to sidestep the immediacy of the threat to our planet

Expert opinion is settled and public opinion united on the urgency of climate action. If our politics or our discourse were in any way functional, there would be no confusion, no debate. We would simply be proceeding from one bold practical action to the next, following the blueprints laid out by the Climate Change Committee.

Instead, we have energy policies stitched together from reheated cliches, which on the one hand doesn’t matter, since no prime minister has been stable or focused enough to iterate them since Brexit, but on the other hand does matter. There is nothing more depressing than to go back to Amber Rudd’s “energy reset” speech of 2015: what if, instead of dismissing renewables incentives as “Blairite”, she’d actually taken them seriously and built on them? What if she’d pushed energy-efficient homes instead of the “unfettered market”, what if she’d made a plan to reduce dependence on gas from Vladimir Putin rather than increase it? “Spoiler alert,” wrote the renewables entrepreneur Bruce Davis at the time: “this doesn’t end well for bill payers.” And nor has it.

Continue reading...

Customers pay on average 20% of their bill towards servicing debt and rewarding shareholders, says CMA

• Down the drain: how billions of pounds are sucked out of England’s water system
• England’s water firms respond to investigation into role of global investors

Ofwat is refusing to limit the soaring debts run up by water companies as research reveals the firms have outstanding borrowing of almost £54bn accrued since privatisation.

Customers are paying on average £80 or 20% of their water bill towards servicing debt and rewarding shareholders, according to the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA).

Continue reading...

Taiwan should prioritise the development of biomass carbon sinks and emerging nature-based solutions to help reach its 2050 net zero targets, a government-funded research institute has urged.

The premium of UK carbon prices to their European counterparts has eroded completely in the last two months as the two markets have moved in opposite directions since the differential reached its peak in September, and funds have amassed a net short position in the UK market.

Anglo-Australian mining company Rio Tinto aims to boost the role of offsets over the next decade to help meet its 2030 climate target, it announced at an investor seminar Thursday, where it laid out details about its $7.5 billion investment plan across several abatement programmes to cut its operational emissions in half by the end of the decade.

Rapid decarbonisation in China's power sector should put the country on 1.9°C pathway, though more actions are needed for the country to help limit global warming to 1.5C, a recent report has found.

Climate change minister tells parliament official projection of 40% cut does not factor in all Labor’s policy commitments

• Follow our Australia news live blog for the latest updates
• Get our morning and afternoon news emails, free app or daily news podcast

Australia’s climate change minister, Chris Bowen, has declared the country on track to reach a 40% cut in climate pollution by 2030 – just short of the national target of 43% – but the government has been told a “big upward shift in momentum” is needed to tackle the problem.

Giving the country’s first climate statement to parliament, which is now required annually under legislation passed earlier this year, Bowen said the official projection of a 40% cut did not factor in all Labor’s policy commitments, and that those measures would “lift our result to at least 43%”.

The statement did not shed light on what the government would do to make deeper cuts in line with its goal of limiting global heating to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels, an expectation raised by a UN-backed report if the Great Barrier Reef is to avoid being nominated as a world heritage site “in danger”. It also did not mention the country’s vast coal and gas export industries.

Sign up for Guardian Australia’s free morning and afternoon email newsletters for your daily news roundup

Continue reading...

The Archeoplastica project exhibits more than 200 artefacts found on beaches, from retro toys to food packets to detergent bottles – some dating back to the 1960s. As countries finally gather to begin the first of five meetings to negotiate an international plastics treaty, the collection highlights the disturbing fact that plastic pollution does not perish

• All photographs by the Museum of Archeoplastica

Continue reading...

South Korea on Thursday named two more securities firms that will act as market makers in the nation’s emissions trading scheme while at the same time more than doubling the KAU holding limits for financials in a bid to boost market liquidity and stabilise prices.

Exclusive: one university cites the industry as a ‘fundamental barrier to a more just and sustainable world’

Three more UK universities have banned fossil fuel companies from recruiting students through their career services, with one citing the industry as a “fundamental barrier to a more just and sustainable world”.

The University of the Arts London, University of Bedfordshire, and Wrexham Glyndwr University join Birkbeck, University of London, which was the first to adopt a fossil-free careers service policy in September.

Continue reading...

Australia will have to increase its emissions reduction rate to about 17 MtCO2e per year – a 40% increase from current rates – if it intends to reach its 2030 and 2050 climate goals, the country’s climate change minister said in a speech to parliament on Thursday.

The exposure of renewable energy to modern slavery is not unique to Australia. But it is time to act and develop different supply chains, or make the products ourselves.

The post It’s time to act on modern slavery in renewable energy supply chains appeared first on RenewEconomy.

AEMO lays out engineering task to allow Australia's main grid to operate on 100 pct renewables, first for half hour periods and then for hours or days at a time.

The post “Unparalleled in world:” AEMO maps route to “hours and days” of 100 pct renewables appeared first on RenewEconomy.

Plant breeders must now engage with kaitiaki if special relationships with a plant have been asserted. But Māori have no say on the introduction of exotic plants that could become invasive. David Jefferson, Lecturer, University of Canterbury Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

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

Federal Labor says it is on track to achieve or even beat its 43% emissions reduction by 2030, after a one-third improvement since Coalition was dumped.

The post Bowen says Australia poised to beat 2030 climate target, as emissions plateau appeared first on RenewEconomy.

California regulator ARB in a public workshop on Wednesday reviewed the state’s forestry offset protocol, exploring expert insights and public input on the relevant science, data, and tools for future amendments to the programme under the WCI-linked cap-and-trade system.