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The European Commission is planning to host a high-level expert event on carbon oversight towards the end of next month, seeking diverse views on how to respond to a long-awaited financial watchdog report, according to leaked plan seen by Carbon Pulse on Friday.

The voluntary carbon market's (VCM) effectiveness as a force in climate action is being called into question, with more than half of credits retired in 2021 representing emissions cuts made more than five years earlier.

Lemon shark ‘kept tugging and tugging, and I could feel its teeth in my ankle’ said Heather West, who was snorkeling off Dry Tortugas

A woman punched a 6ft shark in the face until it let go of her foot, which it bit while she snorkeled off the Dry Tortugas, islands off the coast of Florida.

Heather West, 42 and from Texas, told the Daily Mail the lemon shark “kept tugging and tugging, and I could feel its teeth in my ankle”.

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*PREMIUM LISTING - Carbon Royalty Corp. (CRC) is seeking a Carbon Offset Project Development Manager to provide detailed insight and consultation on the development process for high-quality carbon offset projects. The Carbon Offset Project Development Manager would have a strategic role and work in collaboration with CRC’s dynamic Project Development and Innovation Team, providing technical feasibility support on prospective carbon projects, while also assisting in developing new areas of project development growth.

The American Forest Foundation (AFF) seeks a highly motivated candidate to join the Family Forest Carbon Program (FFCP) Team. Individuals and families own 36% of America’s forests – more than any other ownership group – and are critical to unlocking U.S. forests as a Natural Climate Solution.  Were 20% of these lands to implement management activities that improved carbon sequestration and storage by 2030, an additional 2 gigatons of CO2e would be sequestered and stored over the balance of the century.   

Portugal's EDP and Norway's Statkraft both announced a year-on-year fall in ETS-covered thermal generation for 2021 in their financial results published late this week, the latest in a string of European utilities that have noted a drop in mainly gas-fired output. 

EUAs shrugged off weakness across wider energy markets on Friday to post moderate gains as traders judged the market to have been oversold, while energy markets weakened on milder temperature forecasts and strong renewable generation as Storm Eunice battered the west of the continent.

The best of this week’s wildlife pictures, including a patient great tit, a hungry lemur, and a lucky escape for one humpback whale

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A comprehensive study confirms that oil companies are largely all talk and no action when it comes to clean energy initiatives

This week a peer-reviewed study confirmed what many have suspected for years: major oil companies are not fully backing up their clean energy talk with action. Now the PR and advertising firms that have been creating the industry’s greenwashing strategies for decades face a reckoning over whether they will continue serving big oil.

The study compared the rhetoric and actions on climate and clean energy from 2009 to 2020 from the world’s four largest oil companies – ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell, and BP. Writing in the journal Plos One, researchers from Tohoku University and Kyoto University in Japan conclude that the companies are not, in fact, transitioning their business models to clean energy.

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Taskforce will ‘listen to local people’s concerns’, as government plans to release more than 1m tonnes

A UN nuclear taskforce has promised to prioritise safety as it launches a review of controversial plans by Japan to release more than 1m tonnes of contaminated water into the ocean from the wrecked Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.

Japan’s government announced last April that it had decided to release the water over several decades into the Pacific Ocean, despite strong opposition from local fishers and neighbouring China and South Korea.

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Singapore will raise its carbon tax to reach as high S$80 ($60) per tonne of CO2 by the end of the decade and commit to reach net zero emissions by “around mid-century”, the island state’s finance minister, Lawrence Wong, announced on Friday while delivering the government’s 2022 budget, adding emitters will be allowed to use international offsets towards a share of their obligations.

An abrupt drop in emissions due to the pandemic played a key role in record rainfall in China in 2020.

Chinese carbon allowances fell by almost 6% over the week, though trading volumes were so low that not much can be derived from the price direction, sparking renewed calls for allowing financials to participate in the market.

As Australia’s largest coal-fired plant announces an early closure, groups say government intervention in market ‘undermines confidence’

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Clean energy companies have asked the federal government “not to get in the way” of the private sector by investing in another publicly owned gas-fired power station to replace Australia’s largest coal-fired plant.

Angus Taylor, the energy and emissions reduction minister, said on Friday the government had shown it would “look at all options” to ensure there was enough “dispatchable” capacity in the electricity market after the Eraring coal plant, on the shore of Lake Macquarie in New South Wales, closes from 2025.

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South Korean carbon allowances have suffered losses throughout the week, triggering price volatility measures that market participants expect to be put in place next week.

India’s power ministry released a green hydrogen policy this week, outlining a raft of incentives in the first detailed plan to kickstart hydrogen production from renewables since the announcement of a “national hydrogen mission” by India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi  in August last year.

We conducted modelling to assess the impact of the early closure of the Eraring coal plant on grid reliability, costs and emissions. Here's what it found.

The post Eraring closure will result in more wind, solar and batteries, and less gas appeared first on RenewEconomy.

Angus Taylor appeared to be genuinely miffed that no one gave him advanced notice of one of the landmark events of Australia's rapidly accelerating clean energy transition.

The post Taylor sidelined from energy transition, and it might be the best place for him and his FUD appeared first on RenewEconomy.

Transurban's CityLink tollways in Victoria will be powered by 100% renewable energy, sourced from Australia’s biggest wind farm.

The post Road to renewables, as CityLink switches to 100 pct Victorian wind power appeared first on RenewEconomy.

These are poignant cries of a disappearing landscape – the creaking calls of gang-gangs, buzzing bowerbirds and the mournful cry of the far eastern curlew. Stephen Garnett, Professor of Conservation and Sustainable Livelihoods, Charles Darwin University Anthony Albrecht, PhD Candidate, Charles Darwin University | Co-founder, The Bowerbird Collective, Charles Darwin University Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.