Feed aggregator

The UK government has issued £8.7 mln in new fines resulting from EU ETS non-compliance.

The Head of Carbon will lead work to ensure that Mafisa is successfully validated in 2023, and that credits are subsequently verified. This requires extensive work to ensure that the program fulfils necessary requirements, and that all activities are adequately reported.

Exchange operator ICE on Friday announced it will list three Washington Carbon Allowance (WCA) futures contracts for trading in March, coming several months into the operation of the WCI-modelled cap-and-trade system.

A summary of legislative, regulatory, and policy action on carbon, clean fuel standard, and clean energy markets at the US federal and subnational levels this week, including accelerated clean power targets in New Jersey and Maine.

A US-based carbon offset investor and consultancy this week advanced a strategic partnership that could see the firm eventually acquire tens of millions of offsets from a proposed Canadian improved forest management project, which it said will be the largest in the Western Hemisphere.

Key people are talking but there’s frustration in both camps. The weeks ahead will require maturity and dexterity

• Get our morning and afternoon news emails, free app or daily news podcast

Anthony Albanese believes Australians are suffering from “conflict fatigue” so he’s sought to establish a collaborative tone in the current parliament. Not everybody is on board with that aspiration of course. But thus far, the vibe has skewed towards peace and harmony.

That changed on Wednesday. Labor arrived in the House of Representatives chamber for question time ready to rumble. Albanese and the climate minister, Chris Bowen, held themselves above the fray, but frontbenchers Madeleine King and Tanya Plibersek let rip at the Greens. The trigger was the Greens signalling through media outlets earlier in the day that the next round of climate policy negotiations needed to deliver a ban on new coal and gas projects.

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

Continue reading...

The ID seeks to recruit carbon market professionals in climate governance and carbon markets to work on project management, technical analysis, and administrative support.  The successful candidate will be part of the team supporting capacity building projects to implement Article 6 of the Paris Agreement.

The main responsibility of the Carbon Market specialist will be to provide science-based support in the areas of: GHG, SDG, and transformational impact assessment, institutional development for carbon market accounting and reporting of Internationally Traded Mitigation Outcomes (ITMOs), and transparency for tracking progress of NDCs enabling ambition raising.

Researchers have urged the EU to bolster the market regulator's powers to scrutinise EU ETS trading activity, according to consultation responses this week that revealed others wanting rule changes due this year to only be the first step in a progressive deepening of oversight into the bloc's carbon market.

The International Chamber of Shipping is proposing a fast-starting $50/tonne “fund and reward” carbon levy for governments to adopt at upcoming crunch UN talks to address the maritime sector’s climate impact.

Minette Batters accuses ministers of ‘dereliction of duty’ in failing to ensure safety of agricultural imports

Britain is in danger of a “disastrous” food scandal, owing to lax post-Brexit border controls on agricultural imports, the leader of the UK’s biggest farming organisation has warned.

Minette Batters, the president of the National Farmers’ Union, accused ministers of a “dereliction of duty” in failing to ensure food and other agricultural imports were safe. She warned that the government had failed to learn the lessons of the horsemeat scandal of 2013.

Continue reading...

Companies will soon be on the hook to disclose their full scope of value-chain emissions, but while many are already including these under their own climate targets, the process is riddled with technical complexities that are dampening the incentive to act.

EUAs made a modest move higher on Friday morning, reaching a new six-month high amid very light trading before sinking back as the strength of the recent rally towards €100 appeared to dissipate.

German utility Uniper reported a 15% drop in fossil fuel burn covered by the EU ETS in full-year results published Friday, also taking a €4 billion hit to revenues after losing its Russian subsidiary due to the war in Ukraine, while France's EDF posted a record loss due to extreme lows in nuclear availability.

Brazil-headquartered SocialCarbon on Friday released a methodology for public consultation that will award carbon credits for dealing with harmful algae blooms in freshwater, its latest in a growing number of carbon methodologies with strong biodiversity components.

When discussions take place about environmental protection, we are always ignored. That’s a huge mistake

This week the UK government is holding a meeting to discuss generating more finance to conserve and restore nature. This is following its adoption of a global biodiversity framework in Montreal – the so-called biodiversity Cop15 – in December. Given that it is the destruction and loss of nature that drives the biodiversity crisis, and the framework aims to protect 30% of the Earth by 2030, this all seems like good news.

But as with the discussions in Canada over the framework itself, when it comes to the money, Indigenous peoples are being left out in the cold yet again. While the meeting will bring together private, public sector and philanthropy groups, we have no seat at the table. That’s a mistake. Addressing this crisis is not simply about getting the numbers right. The question of how these funds will be spent should be part of the agenda too, including who will spend them.

Minnie Degawan is a Kakaney/Igorot activist from the Cordillera region of the Philippines and a member of the International Indigenous Forum on Biodiversity (IIFB)

Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.

Continue reading...

The spot price ticked up only marginally in China’s emissions trading scheme over the past week as two block trades adding some much-needed liquidity to the market, though companies remain eager for fresh policy direction.

SSW phenomenon is linked to polar vortex, an area of low pressure across the North Pole

There has been keen interest over recent weeks in the much-anticipated sudden stratospheric warming (SSW) event, which only began this week but is now well under way. The SSW phenomenon is linked to the polar vortex, an area of low pressure across the North Pole that forms within the stratosphere during autumn, as temperatures plummet in the absence of solar radiation.

SSW events are very common and occur two in every three winters. It remains unclear how climate change will affect these events in the future. As the vortex develops during autumn and into winter, westerly stratospheric winds increase in strength. But in the event of a SSW episode, stratospheric temperatures rise rapidly in the space of only a few days, leading to the weakening or even reversal of these winds. The zonal mean winds at 10hPa pressure – about 30km high – turned to an easterly direction on 15 Wednesday February, significantly displacing the polar vortex away from the North Pole. The vortex and zonal winds are forecast to stay much weaker than normal for the remainder of February and into the first half of March.

Continue reading...

Adelaide Festival in South Australia has partnered with developers Wilderlands to give attendees the opportunity to buy voluntary biodiversity credits from a wetlands conservation project, an early example of small-scale community events using the emerging market to help prop up nature protection.

The best of this week’s wildlife pictures, including a lucky sea eagle, a hungry monkey and a dozing panda

Continue reading...