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Wildlife has benefited from the post-Brexit farm payments system, strengthening the case for an extension

Creating the right habitats with public money is helping to stop nature’s decline or even reverse it. That’s the good news from Natural England, which reports more butterflies, bees, bats and birds whizzing around the countryside after the promotion of nature-friendly farming schemes. The body, which advises the government on biodiversity, published research earlier this month showing that the environmental land management scheme (Elms), set up after the UK left the EU, has had beneficial effects.

Unlike the common agricultural policy, which mainly subsidises landowners on the basis of acreage farmed, Elms payments were designed to promote nature. Wildlife has been massively depleted in recent decades due to intensified agriculture and the use of chemicals. Measures that qualify for this new form of support include hedgerow and peat conservation, the creation of landscapes for skylarks and organic fruit-growing.

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Demand for low-quality offsets by major companies is undermining efforts to boost climate integrity in the voluntary carbon market (VCM), according to new research.

The first facility to demonstrate the production of sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) using CO2 and hydrogen in a single-step process has been launched at Oxford Airport on Monday.

A sell-off in Xpansiv CBL's N-GEO futures contract on CME, attributed to an urgent portfolio liquidation, caught the voluntary market by surprise last week.

International air carriers' association IATA has urged that greater supply of CORSIA carbon credits be made available to the market to enable the aviation industry to effectively decarbonise, warning of a looming shortage.

Sixty projects up to 3.5 million hectares of land in size at their largest are in development with the aim of generating biodiversity credits, an international survey has shown.

The EU's General Court will take over the legal jurisdiction for hearing and deciding questions regarding preliminary rulings on the EU ETS, under a change announced on Monday. 

Carbon credits issued under methodologies that have been assessed as adhering to Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market (ICVCM)'s Core Carbon Principles (CCPs) saw a significant year-on-year lift in retirements in June and July, defying the summer slump seen across the wider market.

While bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) is still a nascent technology, companies with biogenic emissions that fail to integrate the solution into their sustainability strategies may be missing out on significant opportunities for both emissions reductions and financial gains, according to a report on Monday.

Many regulated entities under the EU's incoming Emissions Trading System for heating and transport (ETS2) worry they won't be able to meet their first compliance deadline — as all but one EU country has yet to implement the policy into national law, while another is drawing criticism for its move to do so.

A Germany-based investment vehicle is piloting its biodiversity credit methodology for endangered species within a reserve in South Africa, in a bid to increase investors' appetite towards habitat conservation in the area.

European carbon prices rose to a more than two-month high on Monday morning, propelled by year-to-date highs in natural gas and power, and the prospect of sharply warmer temperatures across Europe that were expected to boost the call on thermal power.

A carbon exchange traded fund (ETF) on the Australian bourse will shut down operations next month, citing failure to reach the needed size to track the benchmark and meet its investment plans, not being cost effective to investors compared to other carbon ETFs, and limited secondary market trading volumes.

The Thames is often treated badly: pumped with effluent by water companies and viewed as just a geographical gap or dividing line. It is worth remembering its magic

Pull on your effluent suits and ring the sewage bell because, friends, Thames Water is being fined. Or at least it might be. The industry regulator, Ofwat, finally said out loud what we have all known for some time: that the privatised water company has been pumping raw sewage into our waterways for years. As a consequence, the company is facing a fine of £104m; just to put that number into context, according to the BBC, Thames Water reported an increase in annual profits to £157.3m last year, but is also facing a debt of £15.2bn. It makes huge profits and has no money; it’s almost as if turning one of life’s most essential building blocks into a commodity to be distributed for private gain wasn’t a great idea in the first place.

The thing about the Thames is that many of us – particularly residents of London and the towns and cities further upstream – don’t really think of it as a river at all. We treat it as a geographical gap; a dividing line between north and south, or between local wards, or between different demographics. It might be scattered with boats, sure, but it’s also scattered with plastic bottles, old shopping trolleys, timber pallets and crisp packets, just like any rundown city car park or alleyway. But the Thames is a river. In many ways, it is one of the most beautiful rivers in Britain; aesthetically and for all the history and culture it holds.

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The feasibility of carbon capture, utilisation, and storage (CCUS) is highly uncertain, making it an unviable option for the retrofitting of existing thermal power plants, an Indian government official has told the upper house of Parliament.

One of the many goals of the newly-formed carbon market alliance in Malaysia is to support an interoperable carbon market across the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) region, the association’s inaugural president has told Carbon Pulse.

Goldwind and local partner to file EIS for massive wind and battery project that will feature turbine bigger than any installed in Australia to date.

The post China’s Goldwind files EIS for massive wind and battery project featuring biggest turbines to date appeared first on RenewEconomy.

The government of Tokyo has selected several climate startups to initiate voluntary projects that can create credits from nature-based and farming solutions, with the first batch of pilot projects to be implemented in the coming months.

EU member states handed out fewer than 10 million EUAs for 2024 to industrial installations in the last two weeks, raising the total number of permits issued by just 1.5 percentage points and leaving the market with more than 21% of its annual allocation still to be distributed among emitters.

Deputy Chair of Zero Emissions Noosa, Mark Purcell, is on a mission to get 50,000 households to electrify and install batteries.

The post SwitchedOn Podcast: Taking the pain out of an energy upgrade appeared first on RenewEconomy.