Corporate entities can start planning for data granularity in their emissions reporting based on the drafts and discussions happening around updates for the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) and GHG Protocol reporting standards, experts said on a Tuesday webinar.

Only five of the world’s largest asset managers have set robust interim targets to cut portfolio emissions by 50% by 2030, and more than half fail to meet a single biodiversity standard, according to a benchmark report released Wednesday.

Scotland should aim to cut its emissions by nearly 70% by 2035, from 1990 levels, using more renewable energy to power the spread of heat pumps and electric vehicles, the UK's independent climate change advisor said in a report released on Wednesday.

The EU's imports of six key food commodities face significant environmental risks as they largely depend on climate-vulnerable countries with limited resources to adapt, according to a report released Wednesday.

The UK's Woodland Carbon Code (WCC) and Peatland Carbon Code (PCC) could soon adopt digital systems such as remote sensing and an online management platform to improve the carbon verification process, making things easier for developers and building greater trust with buyers, a webinar heard on Tuesday.

Gold Standard clarified updates on Tuesday to its crediting framework, concerning cookstoves project developers using the fraction of non-renewable biomass (fNRB), new requirements for those looking to secure CCP labels, and its planned alignment with Article 6. 

Carbon-negative cement - UAE industrial group Exeed Industries has signed a MoU with Partanna Oasis, a subsidiary of sustainable building innovator Partanna, they announced in a release Tuesday. The MoU will seek to introduce carbon-negative cement technologies in the UAE, with a plan for the establishment of such facilities in Abu Dhabi to locally produce Partanna's next-gen cement alternatives. Partanna claims its carbon negative building materials actively remove CO2 from the atmosphere, and the goal is for them to be integrated into Exeed’s precast and concrete operations.

EU CDR funding - The European Commission has announced €30 million in funding for direct air carbon capture and storage (DACCS) and marine carbon removals, through its flagship R&D Horizon Europe programme. The first call seeks to finance two projects with around €6 mln each focused on scientific assessments of ocean alkalinity enhancement (OAE) and monitoring, reporting, and verification (MRV) for marine CDR more broadly, with a deadline of Sep. 16. The second call will fund three projects also with around €6 mln each focused on next-generation direct air and point source capture technologies, specifically those that reduce energy/water usage. The second call shall open on Sep. 16 and close Feb. 17, 2026.

European carbon prices unwound most of their losses from the previous two sessions, catching an updraft from strongly firmer natural gas after US President Donald Trump appeared to step back from efforts to bring the conflict in Ukraine to an end, while UK Allowance prices advanced to yet more multi-year highs as traders digested Monday's EU-UK linking agreement.

Clean cement - UK-based cement maker Ecocem is investing €170 mln in the construction of four new production lines in France, and accelerating the delivery of its low-carbon cement technology to the market, it announced on Tuesday. The company will work closely with the French government in the coming months to identify operational and financial solutions for its expansion plan, it said. The investment comes in addition to the €50 mln that Ecocem is putting into its Dunkirk facility, for the first production line of its technology, ACT. At full capacity, Ecocem expects to produce 1.9 Mt per year in France, reducing CO2 emissions by 80,000 tonnes per year.

Tax the polluters - UK PM Keir Starmer came under pressure on Tuesday to set an ambitious fourth round of UK international climate finance by fairly taxing the largest polluters and wealthiest people, as part of the government's Comprehensive Spending Review next month. In an open letter coordinated by Climate Action Network UK, 82 organisations said there were fair ways to boost public finance to up to £115 bln over the next five years of climate action in the UK and overseas, through taxation. The letter cited polling that found that 82% of UK adults agreed that it was wrong for oil and gas companies to make record profits without taking responsibility for the damage they caused, while 64% supported increased taxes on the wealthiest to fund climate action.

German ETS auctions – The auctions for Germany’s national ETS will start on June 3 this year, according to reports. They are starting late because of the federal elections in February and amendments to Germany’s ETS legislation, the reports said. In 2022 and 2023, the first auctions began in January, and in 2024 they began in early March. The auctions are for fossil fuel distributors of in particular heating oil, natural gas, coal, diesel and gasoline. Allowances for 2024 cost €45 and those for 2025 cost €55. Germany’s ETS is due to transition to the EU ETS2 covering heating and transport in 2027.

A new paper has called for the establishment of an international regulatory club to align standards, manage long-term risks, and uphold trust in geological CO2 storage projects to help fully scale these technologies in Article 6 carbon markets.

Verra has launched a review into an eastern European agricultural land management carbon project and now plans to update the associated methodology, it announced Tuesday. 

A European airline has described the 'two tier' carbon scheme created by the EU Emission Trading Systems (ETS) and the UN's CORSIA international aviation offsetting scheme as “manifestly unfair” and “scandalous”.

The Italian government plans to launch biodiversity credit pilot projects across the country, as interest in the emerging market has mounted among companies despite unresolved uncertainties, experts told a conference on Tuesday.

Jurisdictions all over the world are grappling with longstanding legal definitions of state property linked to the particularity of CO2 ownership – with the resulting legal flux injecting uncertainty into the voluntary carbon market (VCM), Carbon Pulse has heard from experts in several countries.

The Netherlands’ plan for renewed natural gas production in the North Sea should introduce a carbon takeback obligation to eliminate the need for CCS subsidies and reduce the risk of legal challenges, argue two expert consultants.

South Africa is preparing to launch a digital biodiversity offsets “portal” on May 22 as a way of trying to increase financing for nature, a minister said on Monday.

The European Commission has selected 15 renewable, or "green", hydrogen production projects for a total of €992 million in public subsidies from the EU ETS-fed Innovation Fund.

A UK bank has set up a new team to help clients buy and finance carbon and biodiversity credits, according to Bloomberg reporting.

Not so fast - A key plan by Germany's new government to introduce a subsidised electricity price for industry could be blocked by EU law, Handelsblatt reported. A discounted industrial power price is a core element of chancellor Friedrich Merz’s plan to prevent the decline of industry in Germany and restore the country to economic growth, but it's highly uncertain the EU would accept this plan. A subsidised industrial electricity price would require a change to EU state aid law, the article said. Currently, the average electricity price for industry is 16.1 cents per kWh, but the proposed subsidy could lower that figure to five cents per kWh. New economy minister Katherina Reiche (CDU) has been urged by officials to send the proposed plan to Brussels within this month.

Key carbon project baseline and leakage standards, adopted following a meeting of UNFCCC experts last week, have been heralded as a significant step forward in ensuring the Paris Agreement Crediting Mechanism (PACM) is robust and aligned with internationally agreed climate warming goals.

Tricky times - Climeworks is mulling over international expansion despite a recent round of job cuts and uncertainty about funding for its direct air capture plants in the US, Sifted reported. The Swiss DAC developer is continuing to work on its largest ever project in Louisiana whilst it awaits a decision on funding, and is also evaluating several other countries to deploy into, with Canada, Saudi Arabia, Norway, and the UK meeting its criteria. Climeworks' first plant Orca has been operating in Iceland since 2021 and its second plant Mammoth is under construction. Last year, Orca captured 1,500 tonnes of the maximum 4,000 tonnes it's been designed to capture, operating for about 65% of the time. Output varies according to factors including weather and planned maintenance. On Saturday, the Guardian reported Climeworks was looking to lay off 10% of its 498 employees. The startup has signed offtake deals with companies including Microsoft, Japanese shipper NYK, and TikTok.

Green guarantee - The European investment fund (EIF) and BNP Paribas Leasing Solutions have signed a €200 mln InvestEU guarantee for SMEs and small mid-caps focused on climate change mitigation and sustainability in France, Germany, Italy, and Spain. The deal signals the EIF’s largest multi-country guarantee until now and is specifically designed to support energy transition leasing solutions. Financial support will be offered to investments in sustainable mobility, energy efficiency, green tech, and renewable energy. More details here.

The open-source MoFuSS fuelwood consumption model, used by clean cooking projects in voluntary and Article 6 carbon markets, will in the coming months launch a user-friendly yet highly granular and customisable online format, according to one of its architects.

A carbon accounting startup and a supply chain risk specialist announced Tuesday they have partnered to help companies collect higher-quality data and reduce Scope 3 emissions across global supply chains.

Carbon standard and registry Isometric has opened a consultation on a new draft module for emissions accounting in carbon removal and finalised a methodology to credit river-based projects.

A French food multinational announced Tuesday it has signed an initial agreement with a Mexico-based agritech firm to deploy 6,500 biodigesters by 2030 across smallholder dairy farms to cut methane emissions from manure.

Ammonia producers in the EU are starting to purchase green hydrogen to decarbonise their operations, faced with the approaching phaseout of free allowances on the EU's Emissions Trading System, according to a green hydrogen developer.

Saudi Aramco, the world’s largest oil company, retired more than half a million carbon credits in 2024, including a batch tied to five “carbon neutral” crude oil shipments in a move to cover upstream emissions, according to its 2024 sustainability report.

R.I.P CSDDD? – French President Emmanuel Macron has called for scrapping the EU’s Corporate Social Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD), aligning with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz in asking for the directive to be withdrawn. “CSDDD and some other regulations have not just to be postponed for one year, but put out of the table," Macron said in English at the ‘Choose France’ conference in Paris on May 19. “We are very aligned now with Chancellor Merz and some other colleagues to go much faster,” he added. The European Commission has proposed postponing the implementation of corporate reporting rules earlier this year, including the CSDDD, which requires companies with a turnover of more than €450 mln to observe human rights and environmental obligations along their entire supply chain or face fines of up to 5% of their global turnover. EU countries have expressed overwhelming support for postponing the rules, while some like Spain have called for preserving them. (AFP)

Not going Dutch – The European Commission has approved a Dutch state aid scheme worth €1.2 bln in support of industrial decarbonisation, the EU executive announced on Tuesday. Called ‘NIKI', the Dutch scheme aims to support companies in their efforts to reduce lifecycle GHG emissions, and introduces competition between direct decarbonisation projects and emission reduction through resource efficiency and circularity projects. The NIKI scheme will be open to companies of all sizes operating in the Netherlands provided they are capable of realising lifecycle GHG emission reductions of at least 100,000 tonnes. The aid amount will be established following an open and competitive bidding process, based on the lowest aid amount requested per tonne of CO2 equivalent abated. The scheme is technology neutral. The Dutch government plans to organise one tender per year during the scheme’s initial five-year operation.

Businesses across the plastic value chain are increasingly exposed to liability risks, with potential consequences on their reputation and ability to attract investments, according to a report released this week.

More than half of each of the EU's six imported food commodities come from countries that are vulnerable to climate change, while half of them – wheat, maize, and cocoa – are also at significant risk of biodiversity-related impacts cutting off their supply, a new study has found.

The emergence of national voluntary carbon markets (VCMs) in Africa is sparking disagreement over whether financial regulators should create harmonised or country-specific frameworks, according to top officials speaking to Carbon Pulse.

The European Commission’s upcoming buying programme for permanent carbon removals (CDR) is estimated to range between €2.5 and €6.2 billion, according to a study released ahead of a public workshop on financing CDR, hosted by the EU executive on Wednesday.

A cookstove project developer expects its carbon credits to be soon labelled with the Core Carbon Principles (CCP) stamp of high integrity, the first in the market from the sector, after slashing emissions reduction claims via a new accounting method, it announced Tuesday.