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The European Commission will consider including six Western Balkan nations in the EU ETS before the countries formally join the 27-nation bloc, according to a new investment agenda for the EU accession candidates. 

The pick of the world’s best flora and fauna photos, including a ‘most wanted’ bear and a lost elephant seal

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US-based Nodal Exchange plans to list next month the first-ever physically-delivered Renewable Identification Number (RINs) futures and options contracts for the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS), as it grows its suite of environmental products, bourse partner IncubEx announced Friday.

£2bn scheme risks becoming ‘postcode lottery’ without government action, says expert

Householders trying to apply for the government’s £5,000 Green Homes Grants to make energy improvements have described how it is nearly impossible to find an accredited installer to do the work.

Homeowners in Cornwall have been pointed towards installers as far away as Scotland, Manchester and south Wales – who understandably, are not interested in quoting for their work.

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A business group is challenging Virginia’s finalised cap-and-trade regulation as it claims the state’s Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) did not follow correct procedure when adopting changes earlier this year.

EUAs dipped below €26 for the first time this week as the market continued to be tested by heightened auction supply and worries about new government coronavirus clampdowns.

UK-based EU ETS trading accounts will be cut off from the end of this year due to Brexit, the British government confirmed this week, while any holders of Kyoto Protocol credits will lose access to those units for several months.

Survey comes as ‘ritual slaughter’ legal case moves through European courts and Polish government proposes restrictions

Nine out of 10 EU citizens want their governments to ban the slaughter of animals that have not been stunned, according to a poll published today.

The results of the survey, carried out for the animal welfare campaign group Eurogroup for Animals, will feed into a cross-Europe debate about so-called “ritual slaughter” – the killing of animals in line with rules of religions such as Judaism and Islam for kosher and halal meat, respectively.

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Clean energy and sustainable food supplies will be the planet’s most pressing issues over the next 30 years

“Experts” have had a raised profile during the Covid-19 pandemic, standing – albeit somewhat embarrassed – alongside Boris Johnson during his press conferences. In coping with health-related matters, scientific advice is crucial. We will also need optimally applied science in meeting other global challenges: developing affordable clean energy, feeding the world and preserving the environment.

The UK has for centuries punched above its weight in science and invention. It’s crucial to sustain our standing in a more competitive world: if we don’t get smarter, we’ll get poorer. Enough of our brightest and best must opt for science, engineering and technology, as millions do each year in east Asia.

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Australian carbon credit issuances slowed to just over 250,000 units this week, while a UN impasse over the future of the CDM could have major impacts on Australia’s voluntary emissions market.

Increasing numbers of people are discovering the pleasures of the turning of the seasons

The path above the pool garden at Knightshayes in Devon is one of the best vantage points on the estate to take in the colours.

As October marches on, the reds, yellows, purples and russets are beginning to deepen in hue and, when the clouds roll away, they gleam in the sunshine.

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Australia should impose clear restrictions if it moves ahead with crediting Safeguard Mechanism entities for emissions reductions, the Climate Change Authority (CCA) said Friday, aiming not to harm the offset market. 

British finance minister Rishi Sunak is examining proposals for a UK-wide carbon tax when the country’s Brexit transition period finishes at the end of the year, The Times reported on Friday, citing unnamed officials.

In focusing on targets, activists from rich countries risk putting metrics above the lives of vulnerable people

The dissonance is enough to make me uninstall Twitter from my phone. Maybe it’s compassion fatigue, maybe it’s 2020. But if I’m honest with myself, it’s a world-sized rift in how we perceive the climate emergency on the different timelines I doom-scroll. On one feed, everyone – American or not – is forced to tune in to each candidate’s climate policy because the US’s electoral fate is inextricably linked to the future of the planet. On another feed from back home in India, 40 new coalmines in the last great sal forests are being served up to any bidder who’ll take them, while civil rights activists from a different era of environmental organising languish in jail, their health deteriorating.

We’re at an inflection point in climate politics, where some governments are readying 30- and 40-year carbon-neutral plans and others are looking to coast into the next decade with pledges that are already five years old. Meanwhile people who have always suffered are contending with the fallout of inaction in the here and now. We need to align these two timelines and to broaden our definition of climate justice, if we are to achieve any measure of justice for the most vulnerable. But in order to do this, we must accept that climate politics are not so black and white any more.

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Msrine experts exasperated by ‘disturbing nature and tone of the hearings’ in ‘a shameless misuse of the parliamentary process’

Coalition senators have criticised scientists and misrepresented evidence given by Australia’s main marine science agency at the close of a “politically motivated” Senate inquiry looking at water quality on the Great Barrier Reef, scientists claim.

More than a year after the Coalition-backed inquiry was launched, a final report was released in parliament on Thursday evening that backed the links between farm runoff – water from farms that flows into the ocean – and impacts on the health of the Great Barrier Reef, but called for better relations with farmers.

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By reporting on issues across the world affecting the climate crisis the media can influence change

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“Will this story make a difference?”

It’s a question journalists ask themselves all the time. The answer is rarely clearcut, and there is no shortage of stories that barely make a ripple. But there have been a number of occasions in recent years on the Guardian’s environment desk when the answer has been a resounding yes.

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Council is latest to push for bathing status for a stretch of river in order to protect it

Oxford has become the latest area to push for bathing water status for an area of river in an attempt to stop Thames Water discharging raw sewage into it.

The city council has backed a motion to apply for a section of the River Thames to become a bathing water area, akin to the status granted to coastal waters in the UK. The status drives up the standards of waterways. Currently no English river qualifies as bathing water, but the designation applies to more than 600 beaches and lakes.

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The Royal Society of Biology has released the shortlisted entries and winners for its Photographer of the Year and Young Photographer of the Year competition. This year’s theme was Our Changing World

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Vessels spent 200,000 hours in 2019 bottom trawling or dredging the seabed in protected areas set up to safeguard vital ecosystems

More than 97% of British marine protected areas, created to safeguard ocean habitats, are being dredged and bottom trawled, according to data shared with the Guardian.

Nearly a quarter of the UK’s territorial waters are covered by MPAs, set up to protect vital ecosystems and species, including harbour porpoises and dolphins. This network of parks is a symbol of the government’s “world leading” target to protect 30% of ocean biodiversity by 2030.

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