Feed aggregator

The European Commission is planning to frontload more EUA sales this year in order to double the size of an Innovation Fund call, according to a leaked draft of the RePowerEU initiative seen by Carbon Pulse on Thursday.

An offset retailer has ditched its policy of allocating the full cost of buying credits back to the project developer after the surge in demand for nature-based offsets saw some credit prices triple over the last year.

Sludge used as crop fertilizer has contaminated soil, water, crops and cattle, forcing farmers to quit

Maine last month became the first state to ban the practice of spreading PFAS-contaminated sewage sludge as fertilizer.

But it’s largely on its own in the US, despite a recent report estimating about 20m acres of cropland across the country may be contaminated.

Continue reading...

The Oregon Clean Fuels Program (OCFP) saw credit generation outpace deficits during the final quarter of 2021, spurred by greater volumes from electricity-based pathways, according to state data published this week.

Congressional investigation reveals the lengths meat industry went to downplay risks to workers and lobby receptive Trump officials

Trump officials “collaborated” with the meatpacking industry to downplay the threat of Covid to plant workers and block public health measures which could have saved lives, a damning new investigation has found.

Internal documents reviewed by the congressional Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis reveal how industry representatives lobbied government officials to stifle “pesky” health departments from imposing evidence-based safety measures to curtail the virus spreading – and tried to obscure worker deaths from these authorities.

Continue reading...

Fatih Birol says ‘carbon bombs’, revealed in Guardian investigation, will not solve global energy crisis

The world’s leading energy economist has warned against investing in large new oil and gas developments, which would have little impact on the current energy crisis and soaring fuel prices but spell devastation to the planet.

Fatih Birol, the executive director of the International Energy Agency (IEA), was responding to an investigation in the Guardian that revealed fossil fuel companies were planning huge “carbon bomb” projects that would drive climate catastrophe.

Continue reading...

The London Stock Exchange (LSE) plans to rule out individual companies for its new Voluntary Carbon Market (VCM) listing, it said Thursday in a consultation note for a label intended to help direct capital from companies seeking to buy carbon credits to complement their net zero strategies.

Japan’s Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corp. has joined an initiative by a group of global banks to set up a settlement platform for voluntary carbon trading transactions.

EUAs drifted slightly amid active trading as the market moved in its narrowest range for three weeks on Thursday morning after Wednesday's volatile price action, while energy markets jumped on renewed concerns over supplies of Russian natural gas.

Huge creature found in Mekong River where planned dams threaten ‘devastating’ ecological damage

A team of marine biologists have welcomed the discovery of a huge endangered freshwater stingray during a recent expedition to a remote stretch of the Mekong River in Cambodia, though they warned the biodiversity of the area was under threat.

The stingray was accidentally caught by fishers in an 80-metre (260ft) deep pool in the Mekong in Cambodia’s north-eastern Stung Treng province. The visiting scientists helped return the animal alive.

Continue reading...

While the $4tn global wellness industry bends over backwards to sell us dubious detox products, there is an accessible, easy, and free way to genuinely rid our bloodstreams of toxins

Among all the toxins in the Pandora’s Box of chemical pollutants that humans have released upon the world, PFAS are particularly disturbing.

PFAS – per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances – are nicknamed “forever chemicals” for their ubiquity, persistence and toxicity. They are used in household items including non-stick pans, waterproof fabrics, and microwave popcorn bags, and can contaminate water, air, soil, crops and animal products. They accumulate in the blood, bones and tissues of living things and do not degrade. PFAS impair human immune systems, making us more susceptible to diseases – even those we’ve been vaccinated against. Researchers associate the chemicals with liver disease, obesity, thyroid disorders, and certain cancers, among other health problems. These observations generally pertain to the relatively few PFAS we have researched, including PFOA and PFOS; PFAS belong to a massive family of chemicals, thousands of them unstudied and potentially harmful.

Adrienne Matei is a freelance journalist

Continue reading...

RWE announced a €850 million writedown on a long-term supply contract for Russian coal ahead of an EU ban this summer, while Uniper's majority owner Fortum said it will divest all activity away from Russia and reported heavy losses from its exposure to the country's energy, the firms said on Thursday.

The case is believed to be the first enforcement action of its kind aimed at preventing the advance of the marbled crayfish

They have claws, 10 legs, can produce hundreds of clones of themselves and have escaped from confinement to potentially run amok across the United States. The ecological threat posed by the marbled crayfish has now prompted prosecutors to wield invasive species laws in an attempt to curb the spread of the peripatetic crustaceans.

An Ohio woman who sold hundreds of marbled crayfish online has pleaded guilty to offenses under the Lacey Act, a US law preventing the transport of certain wildlife across state lines, after raising the crayfish in a huge tank in her home and selling them to people across 36 different states.

Continue reading...

A Papua New Guinea REDD+ project developer has rebuffed allegations published by local NGOs that it was unlawfully expanding its project and was exploiting local communities’ lack of awareness on how the voluntary carbon market works.

As sea levels rise, this natural form of beach replenishment might be an important factor in offsetting some of the damaging effects of climate change on beaches. Mitchell Harley, Scientia Senior Lecturer, UNSW Sydney Gerd Masselink, Professor of Coastal Geomorphology, University of Plymouth Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

Green hydrogen produced in the EU and imported from abroad will be cheaper than all fossil-based hydrogen, according a report published on Thursday, meaning that the bloc must ramp up capacity, build international alliances, and avoid gas-based hydrogen production altogether for climate goals.

The mammals are moving further north into the Arctic and having an impact on landscape and people.

Brazilian company Moss.Earth said late Wednesday it will buy back up to 10,000 of its MCO2 tokens daily in response to the price falling almost 30% over the past week amid turmoil in the crypto market.

A New Zealand agricultural sector group has until the end of the month to submit an emissions pricing scheme proposal to the government, tailor made for the industry, in a bid to keep it out of the nation’s emissions trading scheme in 2025.

Oil and gas companies are upgrading their climate targets but the sector still faces a credibility gap due to reliance on technologies to mitigate emissions that are expensive and unproven at scale, a report released on Thursday has found.