Newsletters > CP Daily: Monday July 11, 2022

CP Daily: Monday July 11, 2022

Published 03:11 on July 12, 2022  /  Last updated at 03:13 on July 12, 2022  / Carbon Pulse /  Newsletters

A daily summary of our news plus bite-sized updates from around the world.

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TOP STORY

ANALYSIS: Chilean carbon market takes slow walk into next phase

The Chilean government’s plans to overhaul its $5/tonne CO2 tax with an offsetting provision are running into legislative roadblocks and implementation challenges, while the design of a new tradable market instrument is laced with uncertainty, experts told Carbon Pulse.

AMERICAS

Pennsylvania appeals RGGI regulation suspension to state Supreme Court

The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) on Monday appealed a judge’s temporary block of their RGGI-linked cap-and-trade regulation to the state Supreme Court, while allowance prices recovered from Friday’s sell off following the decision.

EMEA

Euro Markets: EUAs climb nearly 2% back to recent range as energy remains the focus

EUAs lifted higher amid weaker gas prices on Monday, taking back most of Friday’s losses to head back into their recent range as envoys from the three EU institutions held their first meeting to finalise key carbon market reform bill and the UK announced its latest cost containment trigger level.

EU lawmakers set to raise the bar on energy savings law

Senior members of the European Parliament have struck a provisional deal to push for higher bloc-wide energy efficiency targets than member states agreed and beyond what Brussels has proposed under its RePowerEU initiative to rid the EU’s dependence on Russian fossil fuels.

Thyssenkrupp and BP seek to boost green steel after progress on CBAM

Germany’s biggest steel producer Thyssenkrupp has teamed up with oil major BP to boost green steel development, in the wake of EU legislators adopting firm positions on the carbon border adjustment mechanism (CBAM) that would protect Europe’s industry from cheaper carbon-intensive imports.

UK ETS Authority seeking to improve market transparency, including through revealing registry holdings

The panel overseeing the UK’s Emissions Trading Scheme has launched another consultation, this time seeking views regarding increased transparency through the publication of additional data, including almost real-time information on permit holdings.

VOLUNTARY

Major oil company takes minority stake in large Brazilian REDD developer

A major oil and gas company has taken a minority stake in one of Brazil’s biggest developers of forestry projects as it seeks to boost its nature-based portfolio in the voluntary carbon market (VCM).

VCM Report: Buyers continue to shun carbon as energy prices soar

Demand across the voluntary carbon market remained weak as buyers continued to wait for greater macroeconomic certainty, with bids struggling to rise up to meet offers, causing most standardised verified emissions reduction credits to move sideways or to lose value over the week.

Miner BHP announces first “carbon neutral” conveyor belt deal

Australia-headquartered miner BHP on Monday announced it will install what it claims will be the world’s first “carbon neutral” conveyor belts at a copper mine in Chile, delivered by a Chinese company.

BCarbon voluntary standard issues first international soil credits to UK farmers

A Houston-headquartered voluntary carbon standard BCarbon has issued its first international soil credits to British farmers, it announced Monday.

INTERNATIONAL

UN overseers to meet this month to ready global carbon market mechanism

The Supervisory Body of the UN’s new centralised market mechanism is due to meet later this month to set a path to getting the programme up-and-running by the end of next year.

ASIA PACIFIC

China’s Sichuan rolls out first batch of projects under offset incentive scheme

Four cities and 11 counties across China’s Sichuan province will establish forest carbon schemes as the first batch of projects greenlighted under a fiscal incentive programme launched by the provincial government earlier this year.

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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

Sold short – Humanity’s failure to go beyond narrow economic valuations of natural resources was ruining the planet, according to the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), a world body of scientists, unveiled a four-year study on Monday. The focus of the report is to highlight the vast array of ways in which different people value nature and how frequently those value judgments can clash in practice. (Reuters)

No dossing on loss – Germany’s foreign minister has reassured small island states that suffer the most from climate change that Germany will deliver on its climate financing promises and indicated support in the “difficult conversations” on climate impacts and loss and damage. During a visit to the western Pacific island country Palau, Annalena Baerbock said “no region is suffering more from the climate crisis than you do, even though your share of global greenhouse gas emission is one of the smallest. This is blatant injustice.” Despite Russia’s war against Ukraine and the need to let coal plants run longer in the short term, the minister said that Germany was not backing away from the target of limiting global warming to 1.5C, but rather the opposite, aiming to increase the rate of transition away from fossil fuel energy sources. The minister emphasised that Germany wanted to help minimise the impact of climate change on people’s lives and assist in building new livelihoods where destruction is already irreversible. “That is why we, as industrialised countries, must finally deliver on our $100 bln commitment for climate financing.” She said that another focus must now be on the area of loss and damage. “This is an issue we haven’t talked enough about for a very long time. And it really is about financing,” she said. “It is something which I want to put in the centre of our international climate policy.” The UN COP27 climate conference in Egypt this year will have a focus on minimising and adapting to such losses caused by climate change, and on financial support for developing countries to deal with them. (Clean Energy Wire)

EMEA

Dark clouds – With signs of recession getting more apparent every day, EU employers’ group BusinessEurope has called on the European Commission to reconsider green legislation currently in the pipeline and push for the ‘one-in, one-out’ principle to be applied more strictly. Unveiling its summer 2022 economic outlook on last week, BusinessEurope sounded the alarm bell: the EU “is facing a very difficult period” with high energy costs and the war in Ukraine threatening to send the economy into recession. “It’s a very tough situation we’re heading into,” said Fredrik Persson, a Swedish business executive who succeeded Pierre Gattaz as President of BusinessEurope on 1 July for a two-year period. “I haven’t seen these types of uncertainties in my whole career,” said the business executive, a board member of six companies, including white goods manufacturer Electrolux and the holding company of Swedish furniture giant Ikea, Interogo Holding AB. Clouds are gathering over the EU’s economy, with the euro nearing a two-decade low against the dollar last week as Europe’s energy cost squeeze cast a long shadow over the bloc’s economic outlook. The latest economic forecast from BusinessEurope points to a 2.6% growth rate in 2022, which is “a downward revision of 1.3%” from its previous Autumn forecast. “But ‘within year’ growth in 2022 is expected to be just 0.6%, raising the prospect that individual member states may experience at least ‘technical recessions’ during 2022,” the business association warned in a statement. (Euractiv)

Get with the programme – Germany’s government will make good on a key coalition agreement promise this week and present an “immediate climate action programme” with measures in all economic sectors, reports Tagesspiegel Background. The programme will include measures and rules for energy, industry and agriculture, as well as for transport and buildings. Both the transport and the buildings (heating) sectors failed their annual emission reduction targets in 2021, and the climate action law stipulates that the government must introduce immediate action programmes to ensure they would reach targets in the future. As part of their coalition agreement, the three government partners – Social Democrats (SPD), Green Party, and pro-business FDP – had said they would introduce the immediate action programme “with all necessary laws, regulations and measures.” During a first stock take and presentation of future policy measures, economy minister Robert Habeck in January said Germany was failing its emission reduction goals in 2021 and 2022 and was headed for a 15% target miss in 2030 if no new measures were deployed. (Clean Energy Wire)

Swissmissions – CO2 emissions in Switzerland increased by 1.5% in 2021 compared to 2020, but emissions in the country remain significantly lower than in 2019, before the start of the coronavirus pandemic. Above all, it was the effects of the pandemic that kept a lid on 2021 emissions, the government said in a release. CO2 related to oil and gas burn continued to decrease in 2021, registering a drop of 2.3% compared to 2020. The fall was mainly due to greater energy efficiency buildings and the increased use of renewable energy for heating. Those from gasoline and diesel increased however.

Slick move – France’s energy-intensive companies are speeding up contingency plans and converting their gas boilers to run on oil as they seek to avoid disruption in the event any further reduction in Russian gas supplies leads to power outages. Gathered over the weekend at a business and economics conference in southern France, several top executives said they were preparing for possible blackouts. (Reuters)

Leader levers – Senior members of the UK’s ruling Conservative party are warning that their next party leader could be swayed into ditching its net-zero strategy in order to receive the backing of climate-sceptic MPs. Prominent backbenchers have been plotting for months to persuade any possible replacement for Boris Johnson to ditch climate commitments in favour of expanding the use of fossil fuels. Tory greens are “still scrambling to fall behind an ecofriendly candidate, with nobody yet setting out a positive climate policy vision. Meanwhile, just 70 UK lawmakers of the 1,400-plus bicameral parliament attended an emergency climate briefing by the country’s chief scientific adviser on Monday.

Generational reprieve – Shares in UK utilities climbed after the government said it wouldn’t extend a windfall tax to power generators. A windfall tax on the profits of oil and gas companies, which will be brought before Parliament this week, won’t apply to electricity generators, the prime minister’s spokesman told reporters. Drax Group, SSE, and Centrica all rose on the news. (Bloomberg)

Accelerating clean – The UK-based Net Zero Technology Centre launched applications for the fifth cohort of its TechX Clean Energy Accelerator programme, offering up to £100,000 grant funding available for 12 clean energy start-ups. The programme aims to help high potential companies scale up through mentorship, technology development guidance, commercial support and access to an extensive industry network. Backed by its strategic partners, BP, Equinor and ADNOC, the programme presents opportunities for participating start-ups to refine their business models and investor propositions, find potential field trials, and raise additional funding. Technologies targeted in the programme are renewable energy, green and blue hydrogen and other clean fuels, CCS, digitalisation, and oil and gas emissions reduction.

Tees please – Alfanar is aiming to build a £1 bln plant at the UK’s Teesside capable of processing household waste into enough jet biofuel to power more than 15,000 short haul flights a year, as part of a wider multi-billion-pound UK green investment plan unveiled by the Saudi-based engineering giant on Monday. The first of three UK waste-to-biofuel facilities, Alfanar confirmed it has already awarded an engineering and design contract to Worley for the proposed plant, which it aims to have up and running by 2027 as part of the East Coast Cluster of industrial decarbonisation project. (BusinessGreen)

ASIA PACIFIC

Give it to the cows – Australia’s Woodside Energy has invested close to $10 mln in Indian firm String Bio, which is developing a process for recycling methane emissions into products such as feed for livestock, the company announced Monday. The technology converts the methane into a single-cell protein that can be added to animals’ or even human nutrition as well as to agricultural products. Woodside hopes to implement it at its operational sites to cut methane emissions, but said it can also be deployed at third-party sites that have available biomethane, such as landfill facilities and farms.

AMERICAS

Burning growth – Satellite data from the Brazilian Space Agency (INPE) shows that deforestation of the Amazon hit a new record during the first half of 2022. More than 3,980 square kilometres – an area five times the size of New York City – were deforested in the first six months of this year,  the highest figure going back to at least 2016. The data also shows that fire activity last month was the highest for June in 15 years from farmers burning forest vegetation to clear land for crops and livestock. (Washington Post)

One of the Guy-anas – Guyana announced plans to launch a national carbon registry to further develop its offset market and integration with the REDD+ system. The South American country on the Caribbean coast is looking to cash in on a successful forest conservation programme that has elicited investor interest, according to the country’s vice president. The country’s Low Carbon Development Strategy is intended to pass in the next few weeks and the registry is set to go into service in 2025, and the country is already being courted by international buyers for its forest carbon. (Oil Now)

VOLUNTARY

The REDD Devils – English football club Manchester United has bought 1,800 carbon credits from an Australian reforestation project to offset emissions from its pre-season tour in Thailand and Australia, it said. The offsets stem from developer Carbon Neutral’s Yarra Yarra Biodiversity Corridor.

AND FINALLY…

Weeping Willow – President Joe Biden’s administration on Friday signalled support for a major oil drilling project in Alaska’s National Petroleum Reserve, despite Biden’s campaign promise to end oil and gas leasing on federal lands. Sen. Lisa Murkowsi (R-AK), who supports the project, hailed the release of the assessment as a “major announcement.” The project was initially approved by the Trump administration, then blocked by a federal court for failing to sufficiently consider climate and wildlife impacts, and supported by the Biden administration. While the assessment is not final, pending a 45-day public comment period, the administration’s release of the assessment signals support, yet again, for the proposed multibillion dollar ConocoPhillips “Willow” project that, over its lifetime, would emit as much CO2 as a third of all US coal plants. (Climate Nexus)

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