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TOP STORY

RGGI auction clears within market expectations as emitters’ share dwindles

The Q3 RGGI auction cleared within market expectations as it settled above the secondary market, with compliance entities procuring their smallest sale share since the Q1 2021, according to results released Friday.

AMERICAS

BRIEFING: Tight election race, diverse pledges could mean big changes for Canada’s climate plans

A tight race and key party climate platform differences are combining to keep everyone from policy experts to emissions traders guessing ahead of the Sep. 20 Canadian election.

US Carbon Pricing and LCFS Roundup for week ending September 10, 2021

A summary of legislative and regulatory action on carbon pricing, clean fuel standards, and clean energy at the US subnational and federal level this week, including developments in Illinois and California.

Chevron seeks equity interest in US clean energy storage project

Chevron has agreed on a framework to acquire an equity stake in the Advanced Clean Energy Storage (ACES) project, the US major has announced.

WCI compliance entities added to cumulative short positions after Q3 auction

WCI regulated entities added to their open short positions immediately after the Q3 auction cleared above market expectations, while speculators slightly increased their length, according to US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) data published Friday.

ASIA PACIFIC

CN Markets: Trade in China’s CO2 market shrivels further, leaving traders frustrated

Allowance prices in China’s national emissions trading scheme fell another 6% over the Sep. 3-9 period, with volumes dropping to near zero as frustrated market participants were left waiting for financials to be brought in.

AU Market: ACCUs surge to record highs as demand persists

Australian carbon credits rose to all-time highs in a flurry of trades on Friday afternoon, as steady demand from Safeguard Mechanism entities and voluntary buyers soaked up supply.

EMEA

EU Market: EUAs dive below €61 as Nord Stream 2 launch confirmed

EUA prices on Friday slipped further from this week’s record high, losing more than €2 at one point on profit-taking and as Russia announced that Nord Stream 2 (NS2) was complete and would begin transmitting gas before the end of the year.

VOLUNTARY

Developer Aera strikes €9 mln deal to supply African cookstove offsets

African offset developer Aera Group has struck a €9 million deal to sell offsets from an efficient cookstove programme in Burundi over five years.

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BITE-SIZED UPDATES FROM AROUND THE WORLD

Carbon Pulse has teamed up with CME Group to provide its clients with regular updates on the global carbon markets. Check out these briefs for the latest insights on pressing trends and events impacting markets, published every other week. Registration required

INTERNATIONAL

Carbon-neutral LNG… maybe – LNG shipments tagged “carbon neutral” are gaining popularity among Asian buyers, according to BloombergNEF tracker. The analysts find that twice as many “carbon neutral” LNG shipments have changed hands so far this year compared to 2019 and 2020 combined. North Asia, where energy demand is growing substantially, continues to be the main destination, though purchases of clean gas remain modest compared to total imports into the region. In the past month, BP and Malaysia’s Petronas delivered “green cargoes” to customers in Taiwan and Japan. Thus far, there is no industry-wide standard for measuring emissions from LNG, nor is there oversight to ensure the quality of the carbon and methane offsets being used.

EMEA

Carbon carve-out – Facing a steep and unpopular increase in power prices, the Polish government wants electricity invoices to specify the additional costs households face due to EU climate policies. The bloc’s most coal-dependent nation will need to increase regulated power prices for consumers after EU ETS costs have almost doubled this year. Utilities may ask the regulator to raise prices by 40% in 2022, according to Radio Zet, a move that would further stoke inflation, which is already at a two-decade high. (Bloomberg)

Netting off – Germany could transform its economy to net zero emissions by 2045 at net zero costs, because switching to green technologies opens up new markets and opportunities for growth, consultancy McKinsey has found in a report. McKinsey said the next ten years would decide whether the 2045 target can be met in an economically viable way, and by 2045 Germany would have to invest one trillion euros in new infrastructure and five trillion euros in the modernisation of existing infrastructure. (Clean Energy Wire)

Burial at sea – Norway is offering two new offshore areas for companies interested in developing CCS. One is east of the Troll gas field in the North Sea and the other is northeast of the Goliat oilfield in the Barents Sea. The oil ministry has set a Dec. 9 deadline to submit applications for developing the sites, and said it had already received some preliminary interest beyond the Northern Lights CCS project being developed by oil majors nearby. (Reuters)

Trading up – Standard Chartered bank last month opened an ‘energy transition’ desk led by Head of Carbon Markets Development Chris Leeds, Bloomberg reports. Faraaz Mir will lead its trading of emissions and gas from London, with staff in the US and Singapore, and report to Global Head of Commodity Trading Matthew Hastings. The bank will start with a focus on gas markets in the US, UK, Europe and Asia as well as EU carbon, and has plans to expand the reach of its emissions trading in the future. Leeds and CEO Bill Winters have had major roles in the private sector Taskforce on Scaling Voluntary Carbon Markets over the past year.

ASIA PACIFIC

Trouble – Australian LNG producer Santos’ plan to bury CO2 and delay decommissioning at its Bayu-Undan gas project in Timor-Leste is troubled by low returns and needs a myriad of deals with governments and partners to take off, according to recent internal company documentation, according to Boiling Cold.

Bye coal – New South Wales can “absolutely” stop using coal for power generation by 2030, the Australian state’s energy and environment minister, Matt Kean, said, according to The Guardian. Kean said that New South Wales can stop using coal by that year, even though at least one plant is not scheduled for retirement until the 2040s, with the state planning to develop 12 GW of renewables capacity, backed up with 2 GW of energy storage. “We have the biggest renewable energy plan that has been legislated in the nation’s history right here in NSW and that means as our coal-fired power plants reach the end of their lives over the next decade they will be replaced with renewables,” Kean said. The minister also said that his government had accepted a judgment by the state’s land and environment court last month that the agency had a duty to develop objectives, policies and guidelines to protect the environment from climate change.

Hydrogen deal – Malaysian state-run giant Petronas is partnering with Tokyo-based chemicals company Eneos to explore potential hydrogen opportunities and develop supply chains, Upstream reports. Petronas revealed that it had signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Eneos to explore “low-carbon” hydrogen production from Petronas’ petrochemical facilities and, in the future, green hydrogen produced by renewable energy. The MoU covers a technical-commercial joint study to develop a competitive clean hydrogen supply chain between Malaysia and Japan. Petronas already produces what it terms “low carbon” blue hydrogen as a by-product from its existing facilities and it is looking to explore commercial production of green hydrogen “in the near future”, as it also looks to achieve net zero Scope 1 and 2 carbon emissions by 2050.

SCIENCE & TECH

Magnetic progress on fusion – This week saw advances in technical milestones in the race towards developing fusion energy. Teams working in France and the US have progressed their respective endeavours, with the France team continuing to build out its massive magnet, claimed to be strong enough to lift an aircraft carrier from the sea. Meanwhile, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) team had a successful test of the world’s strongest high temperature superconducting magnet. Proponents of fusion say it offers a clean and virtually limitless supply of energy, while reducing radioactivity in operation and producing little high-level nuclear waste. Research on fusion began in the 1940s but has progressed slowly to date, while both teams believe fusion could be ready for the global stage by the first half of the 2030s. (AP news)

AND FINALLY…

A gas by any other name – A new study finds that the future of natural gas could rest at least partly on whether the widely used fuel keeps going by that name, Axios writes. Yale University researchers, in a survey, found lower support for several other titles, including natural methane gas, methane, fossil gas, and fracked gas. It notes that prior polling shows favourable public attitudes toward natural gas. Part of the paper in the Journal of Environmental Psychology involved asking over 2,900 adults in the US if they had positive or negative feelings for different names, and then to what general degree. Other options all fared worse than the fuel’s common name, however there are also partisan differences, with Republicans more supportive than Democrats of all names, and among Democrats only “natural gas” is viewed favourably on average.

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