Feed aggregator

Norway is lining up a deal to bury London's waste emissions at its massive offshore CCS initiative in what it hopes will be one of many European contracts, while advancing plans to bury a lot of its own output.

California Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS) prices marched to a one-month high this week on optimism that regulator ARB will propose more stringent GHG goals from the programme, but fell over the latter half of the week after the agency’s draft Scoping Plan provided few new details on this ambition.

Nature-based carbon credit futures have largely withstood a wider voluntary carbon market (VCM) shakedown in recent months, with robust demand expectations and near-term economic woes blowing out spreads along the curve.

A loophole in EU policy that means CO2 emissions from burning biomass for energy not currently included in the ETS could add an additional 15% to the scheme's total emissions, according to a report from an environmental group.

Brazil’s national cap-and-trade system will go beyond the industrial and power sectors to include agriculture, and also allow voluntary market projects to generate credits eligible for compliance use, according to a draft of the presidential decree seen by Carbon Pulse.

Taiwan’s Legislative Yuan on late Thursday signed off on the first reading of the island’s revised climate bill that would put the government’s 2050 net zero target into law, but the document remains vague on the level of a planned carbon levy as well as potential use of international offsets.

Poseidon Water sought to turn seawater into drinking water but activists said plan would devastate ecosystem on Pacific coast

A California coastal panel on Wednesday rejected a longstanding proposal to build a $1.4b seawater desalination plant to turn Pacific Ocean water into drinking water as the state grapples with persistent drought that is expected to worsen in coming years with climate change.

The state’s Coastal Commission voted unanimously to deny a permit for Poseidon Water to build a plant to produce 50m gallons of water a day in Huntington Beach, south-east of Los Angeles.

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EUAs posted robust gains on Friday morning as the market interpreted as bullish the 2021 market supply data published late on Thursday, while energy prices weakened as gas flows from Russia showed no sign of shrinking after sanctions were imposed on German-controlled former units of Gazprom.

Group commissioned by mayor Sadiq Khan in early stages of move to bring nature back to capital

London will be “rewilded” with new nature reserves, pocket parks and a mass community movement to bring nature back to the capital, the Guardian can reveal.

A group of rewilding experts commissioned by the mayor, Sadiq Khan, are in the early stages of drawing up the proposal. The idea came from Ben Goldsmith, a financier and environment campaigner who is on the board of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.

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Just a handful of mink breeders in Denmark express an interest in re-entering fur industry, even if the current ban is lifted next year

Danish mink breeders have turned their backs on the industry en masse after being forced to cull their animals over fears a Covid-19 mutation could pose a risk to human health.

In November 2020, Denmark, at that point the world’s largest mink producer, controversially announced it would cull approximately 15 million animals due to fears a Covid-19 mutation moving from mink to humans could jeopardise future vaccines.

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Environment agency says initial investigation into all 10 water firms suggests possible ‘serious non-compliance’ with law

A criminal investigation into water companies in England has uncovered suspected widespread illegal sewage discharges from treatment plants, the Environment Agency has revealed.

The investigation into more than 2,200 water treatment plants run by all 10 water companies is examining whether the firms breached legal regulations about when and how frequently they are allowed to release raw sewage into waterways.

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Brutal heatwave in India and Pakistan also certain to have been exacerbated by global heating, scientists say

The massive and deadly floods that struck South Africa in April were made twice as likely and more intense by global heating, scientists have calculated. The research demonstrates that the climate emergency is resulting in devastation.

Catastrophic floods and landslides hit the South African provinces of KwaZulu-Natal and Eastern Cape on 11 April following exceptionally heavy rainfall.

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Hi-tech UK laboratory launched to save trees from threats including oak processionary moth, emerald ash borer and citrus longhorn beetle

The public are being urged to keep an eye out for any signs of disease in local trees, as the UK launches a hi-tech, £5.8m tree laboratory to fight the spread of pests and diseases.

The UK is especially vulnerable to the growing spread of plant pathogens because of warmer, wetter winters, and because it is a hub for global trade. The new research laboratory is set to address these threats by clamping down on pests in the UK and abroad, including the oak processionary moth, emerald ash borer and citrus longhorn beetle.

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The Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry (METI) will work with Japan Exchange Group (JPX) to build a trading platform for the country’s domestic emissions market that will be operated as part of the Tokyo Stock Exchange, Nikkei reported Friday.

Chinese carbon allowances have remained unchanged for the past two weeks with no regulatory news on the emissions market and the government’s attention firmly fixed on the Covid situation.

Indonesia’s national oil company (NOC) Pertamina has formed a partnership with US major Chevron to co-operate on low carbon business opportunities in Indonesia and other Asian markets, they companies announced Friday.

Analysis: Queensland flash floods have cut off communities and killed one woman, swept away in her car

Torrential rain has been hitting eastern Australia since Monday, with rainfall totals on the north-east coast widely achieving in excess of 100mm. In Yabulu, north of Townsville, there was major flooding on Tuesday as 196mm of rain fell within 24 hours. This was not the highest total recorded, however, with 244mm of rain falling on Tuesday at Mourilyan, near Innisfail on the Cassowary Coast.

The threat of heavy rain sank south across Queensland to the south-east, reaching Brisbane and the Sunshine Coast on Wednesday; stations in the south-east recorded up to 100mm, with a station in Dayboro recording 161mm. A further 100-150mm of rain fell on Friday across the south-east.

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The climate crisis has exacerbated drought across Mexico. But female-led projects to build harvesting and filtration tanks are helping communities conserve what rain there is, and make it safe to drink
Words and photographs by Matteo Bastianelli

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The research is an important step towards making long-terms stays on the moon possible.

Techno-utopianism is popular precisely because it doesn’t challenge the status quo, and lets polluters off the hook

In seeking to prevent environmental breakdown, what counts above all is not the new things we do, but the old things we stop doing. Renewable power, for instance, is useful in preventing climate chaos only to the extent that it displaces fossil fuels. Unfortunately, new technologies do not always lead automatically to the destruction of old ones.

In the UK, for example, building new offshore wind power has been cheaper than building new gas plants since 2017. But the wholesale disinvestment from fossil fuels you might have expected is yet to happen. Since the UN climate summit last November, the government has commissioned one new oil and gas field, and reportedly plans to license six more. It has overridden the Welsh government to insist on the extension of the Aberpergwm coalmine. Similar permissions have been granted in most rich nations, even before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

George Monbiot is a Guardian columnist

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