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

A carbon credit ratings agency has put a REDD forest protection project “on watch” for a potential change in its rating after the scheme was the subject of a critical investigation.

First official trades in "nega-watts" - dialling down demand at times of high prices - points to a smarter future for the grid.

The post One small blip of demand response, one big leap to smart green grid appeared first on RenewEconomy.

California Carbon Allowance (CCA) prices were subject to counteracting influences this week as equities sold off and state regulator ARB released the draft Scoping Plan, while RGGI Allowance (RGA) values also declined but were still well bid beneath the Cost Containment Reserve (CCR) trigger price.

A South African startup is targeting funding more than 100 MW of distributed renewables generation through the sale of tokenised carbon credits.

Analysis shows alarming level of benzene at fence-line of facilities in Texas, Louisiana, Pennsylvania, Indiana and US Virgin Islands

A dozen US oil refineries last year exceeded the federal limit on average benzene emissions.

Among the 12 refineries that emitted above the maximum level for benzene, five were in Texas, four in Louisiana, and one each in Pennsylvania, Indiana and the US Virgin Islands, a new analysis by the Environmental Integrity Project revealed on Thursday.

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EU lawmakers want to clamp down on speculative traders participating in the EU ETS. There’s been a steady drumbeat of complaints over the past few months from MEPs and some member states, claiming that unnamed speculators have driven the price of EUAs too high, and that it’s costing industry too much money. But is restricting speculator access to the EU ETS such a good idea? And is it even feasible?

A messy and uncertain transition will cost the consumer more. But while the cost-of-living canary has fallen off its perch, few are sounding the alarm.

The post Green energy transition: Cost-of-living canary falls off its perch appeared first on RenewEconomy.

Efforts to save the reef aren’t tackling the main cause: climate change. What we need from our next federal government is strong leadership to avert the climate crisis. Jodie L. Rummer, Associate Professor & Principal Research Fellow, James Cook University Scott F. Heron, Associate Professor in Physics, James Cook University Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

Dairying is not simply unsustainable, it also violates Māori values – including those that call for us to respect the natural world

New Zealand’s dairy industry is under pressure. It is one of our biggest earners, accounting for roughly 3% of our GDP; and since cows were first brought here about 200 years ago, dairy farming has taken on cultural significance for Pākehā (NZ Europeans) especially.

But it is also attracting increasing scrutiny. As well as polluting our land and waterways, dairy is to blame for large amounts of greenhouse gas emissions. Jacinda Ardern’s Labour government has developed legislation to mitigate environmental pollution, but critics say it is not adequately addressing the harm dairying causes.

Philip McKibbin is a writer from Aotearoa New Zealand of Pākehā (New Zealand European) and Māori (Ngāi Tahu) descent

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As the staff lead for auctions, you will be a crucial member of the cap-and-invest team. You will coordinate and implement allowance auctions that firms participate in to meet their emissions compliance obligations. These auctions are the linchpin of the cap-and-invest program.

The Science Based Target initiative (SBTi) released its third annual progress report on Thursday, releasing the figures tied to the groundswell of companies that are committing and setting robust climate targets, while also pointing out a lack of reporting on actually delivering on those targets.

Toronto-based ESG investor Carbon Streaming Corporation broke into the US market with its first biochar carbon stream agreement with Restoration Bioproducts announced Thursday, aiming to help build a biochar production facility in Virginia.

Oil companies and petrostates are investing heavily in fossil fuels, in defiance of global targets. They must be stopped

These are frightening times. It is shocking to learn that just a few months after the show of international common purpose at the Cop26 climate summit in Glasgow, countries including the US, Canada and Australia are among those with the most destructive oil and gas projects, threatening to shatter the target of limiting global heating to 1.5C. A Guardian investigation has revealed that the world’s biggest fossil fuel firms have 195 “carbon bomb” projects that would each emit at least 1bn tonnes of CO2 – and that 60% are already under way. Only last month, the International Committee on Climate Change warned that the world is on course to overshoot the 1.5C target, prompting António Guterres, the UN secretary general, to describe governments investing in new fossil fuels as “dangerous radicals”. On Monday, a new forecast warned that the probability of one of the next five years exceeding the 1.5C limit was 50%.

In the face of these stakes, and this evidence, the actions of the world’s biggest energy companies are perplexing as well as enraging. Why are energy giants continuing to invest in fossil fuel projects capable of causing such colossal harm? One expert suggests “a form of cognitive dissonance” is behind the refusal or inability of governments, as well as businesses, to change course in spite of the risks. Another says the scale of planned production suggests oil companies are still in denial about global heating, whatever they publicly claim – or have “complete disregard for the more climate vulnerable communities, typically poor, people of colour and far away from their lives”. One climate activist attributed such recklessness to a “colonial mindset”, which could equally be described as genocidal given the severity of the expected consequences of unchecked heating.

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Writers aren’t science experts, Grenville writes. But they might be able to influence their readers to cast their ballots for the climate

• Top Australian writers call for climate action to be at the centre of election
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I’ve been what you might call a passive climate change activist for many years. I’ve had the bumper stickers, I’ve made the donations, I’ve gone on the marches (my latest handmade sign said “Renewables=Jobs” – true, but not exactly catchy).

And of course I’ve wondered if I could write a novel about climate change that would electrify people into action. I’ve wrestled with a few ideas, but how could you possibly dramatise the thing? Darling, he whispered into her ear. Did you know that coal is the best carbon capture technology that’s ever been invented? Oh, she murmured, does that mean we shouldn’t be burning it?

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Almost 348 mln carbon allowances will be withdrawn from the EU ETS through next summer and inserted into the MSR, the European Commission announced late Thursday in its annual 'TNAC' update, with the market's oversupply falling 8.2% due to a rebound in emissions in 2021.

Cutting European aviation emissions 55% by the end of the decade could cost up to €62 billion, with the airline industry itself needing to stump up €14 bln, unless the industry quickly reforms with efficiency improvements that could half the bill, warns a new study.

Switzerland will in June hold its first carbon permit auction for Phase 3 of its ETS (2021-30), it announced Thursday.

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.