Around The Web

The US Supreme Court's ruling against the EPA creates roadblocks for reducing carbon emissions but the agency can still enforce the current rule on the books in more creative ways, according to legal experts.

Price cap likely to return to Queensland on Tuesday as market operator seeks emergency reserves in country's most coal dependent state.

The post Price cap could return on Tuesday as coal and gas drive prices higher again appeared first on RenewEconomy.

Sun Cable names financial advisors to raise more than $30 billion for what will be the world's biggest solar and battery project, and the first of many.

The post Sun Cable names financial advisors for world’s biggest solar and battery project appeared first on RenewEconomy.

Washington state’s proposed cap-and-trade programme could launch with prices of $41/tCO2e next year if the market is expected to link with the WCI California-Quebec system in 2025, according to independent analysis published late last week that projected prices up to 65% higher under non-linked scenarios.

Switzerland will offer 157,300 spot aviation carbon allowances from 2022 at auction in September, it announced late last week.

You will lead a team that is responsible for digital delivery, ETS operations and the ETS project management office, working closely with another DD responsible for ETS policy and strategy.

NGOs in eight heavily forested tropical countries on Monday launched a mapping system aiming to crack down on illegal logging as a low-cost alternative to REDD projects, as another nation has banned all timber exports and a further country has put a block on the voluntary carbon market.

AirCarbon Exchange (ACX) has signed an MOU with the newly-launched Nairobi International Financial Centre (NIFC) to start a carbon exchange in Kenya as a basis for attracting low-carbon finance to East Africa.

Swiss President Ignazio Cassis hosted leaders at the Ukraine Recovery Conference in Lugano on Monday, aiming to pave a way towards an eventual rebuild and recovery for the war-torn country, including through low-carbon infrastructure investment and the development of a green export sector.

The colonisation of Australia coincided with a boom in European interest in exotic animals – so kangaroos, dingoes, wombats and more were shipped off, regardless of practicalities

In early 1943, the second world war raged across multiple theatres. Hitler’s army had just suffered a historic defeat at Stalingrad, but U-boats still prowled the Atlantic and Britain’s resources were stretched to the limit. So it must have come as a surprise to Australian prime minister, John Curtin, when a telegram arrived from Winston Churchill requesting six platypuses be sent to Britain forthwith, in a scheme conservationist Gerald Durrell described as “magnificently idiotic”.

Historians have tried to place this episode in a broader context of empire and international geopolitics, but it seems Churchill just really wanted a platypus. He had collected exotic animals throughout his life, including black swans, a white kangaroo, a budgie named Toby who attended ministerial meetings, and a lion named Rota, which he sensibly kept at London Zoo.

Continue reading...

Commodities traders Vitol and the managers of Nigeria’s sovereign wealth fund have agreed to create a joint venture to invest in a series of carbon avoidance and removal projects.

The European Parliament could fall 60 votes short of rejecting EU plans to apply a green label to gas and nuclear investments, EU sources told Carbon Pulse on Monday, though this week’s ballot remains in the balance with up to 100 lawmakers yet to make up their minds.

Spanish financial services bank BBVA has joined an initiative set up by a group of international banks to create a settlement platform for voluntary carbon trading transactions.

Standardised nature credits this week extended their slump to more than a month, as offsets continue to take cues from a weak macroeconomic picture and as traders see few signs of support in the near future.

The Netherlands is to expand its mandatory energy efficiency measures to EU ETS-covered firms from 2023, the government said on Monday, deepening its efforts to cut emissions and end reliance on Russian fossil fuels.

Effects of human-caused global heating are blocking vital winter rains, with severe implications for farming and tourism

Spain and Portugal are suffering their driest climate for at least 1,200 years, according to research, with severe implications for both food production and tourism.

Most rain on the Iberian peninsula falls in winter as wet, low-pressure systems blow in from the Atlantic. But a high-pressure system off the coast, called the Azores high, can block the wet weather fronts.

Continue reading...

LMS requires the services of a full-time or part-time Manager – Carbon Policy.

EUA prices were modestly lower in thin Monday morning trading despite significant rallies in energy markets, where record highs in German power and imminent strikes at Norwegian gas production boosted prices by as much as 10%.

The more we automate our farms, the less we understand about our food. Let’s not get too hands-off

After one of my regular 4.30am starts last week, I caught a snippet of a feature on Farming Today about fruit-picking robots. Hearing about the multi-billion-pound mechanical arms and 3D sensors of this new machine, I was filled with something like sadness. Not just because of what this says about our self-inflicted workforce shortage (sigh) due to political foot-shooting and the undervaluing of manual work. But because fruit picking could be so different.

I once spent an interesting few nights in New Zealand, sharing a motel with about 50 apple-pickers from Vanuatu, Samoa and beyond. We listened to reggae, washed our pants in the sink and smoked cigarettes as they told me about thinning out baby apples, and picking pineapples and peaches. It was a hard life, absolutely no doubt. A dawn start in a cramped rented room, sleeping under polyester floral eiderdowns with nothing but a kettle and a juddering shower, before being driven to different farms is not easy work. And, of course, these setups are rife with corruption and exploitation and modern slavery. But are robots our only alternative?

Nell Frizzell is the author of The Panic Years and Square One (published 7 July)

Continue reading...

Japan’s environment ministry has identified another 16 projects under the Joint Crediting Mechanism (JCM) that it will subsidise in a bid to earn more carbon credits that will be used towards its Paris Agreement target.