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President-elect said he would work to save Amazon rainforest and key ecosystems in rousing Cop27 speech

President-elect Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has told the world that “Brazil is back” at Cop27, vowing to begin undoing the environmental destruction seen under his far-right predecessor, Jair Bolsonaro, and work towards zero deforestation of the Amazon rainforest.

Followed by a carnival atmosphere wherever he went on Wednesday, Lula told the climate summit that his new administration would go further than ever before on the environment by cracking down on illegal gold mining, logging and agricultural expansion, and restoring climate-critical ecosystems.

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Companies should consider purchasing carbon removal credits, or investing in climate projects, commensurate with their ability to pay, not their emissions levels, according to a report published on Wednesday, that found that emissions intensive sectors are amongst the least likely buyers under this approach.

Excess profits look set for a levy in the autumn statement but first define ‘excess’ and for who

“It’s like entering a lottery: you know something’s coming your way, but you’ve got no idea exactly what,” says one chief executive of a large UK electricity generator about the looming windfall tax on his sector. It’s a fair comment. Government thinking on the generators – as opposed to the North Sea oil and gas producers, who already have a levy – has been spinning like a wind turbine for six months.

Back in May, then-chancellor Rishi Sunak said he was “urgently evaluating” the scale of excess profits being made by generators on the entirely sensible grounds that not all windfall profits have been made by firms producing dirty hydrocarbons. Nuclear power plants, windfarms, solar farms, hydro projects and biomass burners may also be doing very nicely thanks to a UK energy system that ties the price of electricity to the price of gas.

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Roughly 25% of global GHG output is occurring through international trade, and nations must consider carbon border adjustment mechanisms (CBAMs) and other measures in order to adequately mitigate these emissions, according to a report published Tuesday.

Activists stage demonstrations at the climate summit in Sharm el-Sheikh as Brazil’s president-elect calls for future Cop to happen in Amazon

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Antigua and Barbuda has partnered with a blue carbon consultancy, aiming to unlock millions of dollars in financing for the climate transition by restoring and protecting the nation's coastal habitats.

The EU and Egypt signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to develop and produce renewable hydrogen and its derivatives, it was announced at a COP27 joint press conference on Wednesday.

More than 60 countries have joined Japan’s Article 6 Implementation Partnership at COP27 in Sharm-el-Sheikh, as the country seeks to spearhead a global effort to spur international emissions trade.

It’s arrogant of the activists who attacked a Klimt to assume anyone who cares about art doesn’t also care about the planet

Another day, another gallery: the attacks on art in the name of climate action have become a headline-hogging obsession with a hideous escalating logic. The nastier the treatment a famous masterpiece gets, the bigger the media coverage.

Now, members of Letzte Generation Österreich (Last Generation Austria) have smeared “non-toxic fake oil” all over the glass covering of Gustav Klimt’s Death and Life, a colouristic vision of pink and gold intertwined human bodies menaced by the grim reaper. Not that you can see much of that in the disturbing images of the attack at the Leopold Museum in Vienna: a black and purple stain all but obscures the delicate picture. The aggression of the attack takes this wave of action a step further than tomato soup on Vincent van Gogh’s Sunflowers and mashed potato on a Monet. But a step further to where?

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The public-private LEAF Coalition expects the first issuances of jurisdictional REDD credits under the ART TREES standard in the first half of next year, a programme coordinator told a COP27 side event on Wednesday, adding that four more Brazilian states are due to sign up aiming to supply units in future.

New modelling suggests climate change-driven variability will be detectable decades earlier than previously expected

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Stronger La Niña and El Niño events due to global heating will be detectable in the eastern Pacific Ocean by 2030, decades earlier than previously expected, new modelling suggests.

Researchers have analysed 70 years of reliable sea surface temperature records in the Pacific Ocean to model changes in the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (Enso) under current projections of global heating.

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The expert on carbon standards consultant will work with the DAPA Program team by providing expert technical advice in the technical design of crediting policy approaches in compliance with commercial carbon standards, in particular, the Gold Standard.

Compensate is a carbon offset services provider / impact-driven growth company that is recognized in the voluntary carbon offset market for its high integrity and work towards elevating existing market standards. We are looking for a Sales Executive to join our growing team.

The Compensate Foundation is a non-profit organization that focuses on advocacy work to improve the integrity of the voluntary carbon market. Now we are looking for an Executive Director to lead the non-profit advocacy work of Compensate to the next level.

A German-headquartered project development firm has acquired an ownership stake in another, they announced Tuesday.

EUAs dropped by as much as 3.8% as traders appeared to suffer jitters ahead of this evening's trilogue meeting to negotiate a compromise package on the REPowerEU package, which is likely to involve selling EUAs to raise funds, while gas markets weakened amid forecasts that EU storages will be higher than normal at the end of the coming winter.

The siren call of climate-burning expansion bewitches British politics. More of the same will emerge in the autumn statement

If things had been different, Rishi Sunak might have topped off his trip this week to the G20 summit in Bali with a quick dash back to Sharm el-Sheikh for the final hours of Cop27. But gone, sadly, are the days when getting a climate deal over the line was top priority for world leaders. Now they prefer to show up for the opening ceremony and then leave. It’s safer to grace the platform when there’s only hot air and the moral high ground at stake. And besides, Sunak has a diary clash tomorrow. He and Jeremy Hunt don’t have time to save the planet. They have to try to save the Tory party.

Like a couple of cleaners wading around in the aftermath of a bloodbath, the prime minister and his chancellor have been warning everyone for weeks how messy things are going to be in their autumn statement. Cut spending. Raise taxes. Raid pensions. Everyone is going to have to make sacrifices. Nothing is off the table. Nothing, that is, except identifying (and punishing) the architects of the chaos.

Tim Jackson is professor of sustainable development at the University of Surrey and director of the Centre for the Understanding of Sustainable Prosperity

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Singapore has added a third global carbon offset standard to supply carbon credits that domestic companies can buy to count towards their carbon tax obligations.

Verra, the largest certifier body in the voluntary carbon market, will pilot a digital monitoring, reporting and verification (MRV) platform that promises to slash the time and cost of traditional carbon accounting methods, it announced at COP27 on Wednesday.

G20 leaders agreed to pursue efforts to limit the global average temperature to 1.5C at this year’s summit in Bali, with the world’s largest economies also agreeing to address the issue of loss and damage from climate change and reaffirming broadly-termed commitments to phase down unabated coal use and phase out fossil fuel subsidies, in moves that were generally welcomed by climate groups on Wednesday.