The UK Climate Change Committee (CCC) on Thursday recommended that the Welsh government meet emissions reduction targets through domestic mitigation, not international carbon credits.

GHG emissions from farming - How effective government and policy initiatives are in mitigating agricultural GHG emissions across 16 countries in West Africa between 2015 and 2020 is assessed in a study published this week on sciencedirect.com. Complex socio-economic and environmental dynamics in the region compound the problem of GHG emissions from agriculture. Yet despite challenges, countries such as Benin and Cape Verde have achieved reductions or stability in emission levels through policy measures for sustainable agriculture, institutional capacity-building, and regional cooperation.

European carbon prices rose the most in more than three weeks on Thursday after a strong afternoon session, shrugging off an early decline driven by falling gas amid analyst reports showing the EU was set to meet its storage mandates, and rejecting a move below a key technical support level.

Microsoft’s thirst for bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) credits dominated the carbon removal (CDR) sector in the second quarter, according to a data platform.

Gold Standard’s new process of approving private insurance policies for carbon project developers looking to sell credits in the UN aviation offsetting scheme could help to boost supply in a crunched market – particularly if other standard setters follow suit and big insurers join in, officials involved in the arrangement told Carbon Pulse. 

Biorefinery upgrade - The European Investment Bank (EIB) has signed a €500 mln, 15-year financing agreement with Eni to convert its Livorno refinery into a biorefinery. This would be Eni’s third such plant in Italy, following Venice and Gela. The project involves the construction of new facilities to produce hydrogenated biofuels from renewable sources such as used cooking oil and food waste. Using Eni’s Ecofining technology, the site would generate HVO diesel, HVO naphtha, and bio-LPG. The plant would also be designed with future capability to produce SAF. The initiative forms part of Enilive’s strategy to exceed 5 mln tonnes of biorefining capacity by 2030, aligning with Italy’s plan to boost annual biofuel use to 1 mln tonnes by the same year.

Ondrej Knotek, a far-right Czech lawmaker who was appointed as the European Parliament’s speaker on the EU’s 2040 climate target, has called for rejecting the proposed objective, warning of the negative impact it would have on Europe’s economy.

On the naughty list - The European Commission opened infringement procedures by sending letters of formal notice to 26 EU member states (Belgium, Bulgaria, Czechia, Germany, Estonia, Ireland, Greece, Spain, France, Croatia, Italy, Cyprus, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Hungary, Malta, the Netherlands, Austria, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovenia, Slovakia, Finland and Sweden) for not communicating the full transposition of the amended Renewable Energy Directive into national law. The deadline was May 2025, and the new rules aim to accelerate the deployment of renewable energy in all sectors of the economy, not only in the power sector. To date, only Denmark has notified full transposition of the directive by the legal deadline. Member states now have two months to respond, complete their transposition and notify their measures to the Commission.

Shareholder payout - Repsol has confirmed its shareholder payout target on Thursday after 2Q adjusted profit fell less than expected, despite a €175 mln hit from a huge blackout in April and other power supply problems. The April 28 blackout that caused chaos in cities across the Iberian Peninsula also cut power to five of the Spanish utility's refineries and three chemical plants in the region. Repsol is considering potential legal action about the impacts of the outage. Including dividends, shareholders will in 2025 receive between 30% and 35% of the cashflow the company generates from operations. Repsol booked a quarterly adjusted profit of €702 mln, compared with €859 mln a year earlier, and a company-provided average forecast of 500 mln. Net profit fell to €237 mln from €657 mln. (Reuters)

Turkiye’s new law and regulation establishing a national emissions trading system (ETS) has relegated major decisions to later legislation or implementing authorities, potentially compromising environmental integrity, a Turkish legal expert has told Carbon Pulse.

Forward purchases, innovative debt structures, and buyer coalitions will remain critical to unlocking investment in engineered carbon removal (CDR) this decade, as supply struggles to keep pace with demand, according to a report released Thursday.

The carbon capture and storage (CCS) industry has listed its demands for the upcoming revision of the EU’s Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), asking for the introduction of differentiated carbon removal certificates in the bloc’s carbon market, and a clear definition of residual emissions going forward.

In a joint declaration on Thursday, Brussels and Beijing pledged to submit new climate plans for 2035, and reaffirmed their commitment to cooperation on carbon markets, but critics said the statement lacked specifics when it comes to phasing out fossil fuels and climate finance to developing nations.

Redirecting projected climate-driven profit losses from the US homeowners’ insurance market to mitigation efforts could fund up to 85% of the global annual carbon reductions needed to limit warming to 1.5C, according to a peer-reviewed study published Thursday.

Scaling sustainable aviation fuels (SAF) from novel technologies and non-food feedstocks remains a challenge in the EU, despite new climate legislation, and risks derailing climate goals, according to a climate think tank. 

The development of a carbon-differentiated market for commodities is primarily held back by a lack of standardisation in the monitoring, reporting, and verification (MRV) of product-level emissions, even though regulations like the EU's carbon border levy will directly tie emissions to financial value, said analysts on a webinar Thursday.

Earnings drop - TotalEnergies reported a 23% drop in 2Q earnings on Thursday, due to the impact of lower oil and gas prices outweighing a rise in production and electricity sales. Adjusted net income fell to $3.6 bln for the three months to June 30, down from $4.7 bln a year earlier, and $4.2 bln in the first quarter, Reuters reported. Brent crude prices have declined 20% from a year ago as OPEC+ producers began to unwind output cuts of 2.17 mln barrels per day in April. Profit from the company's integrated LNG unit was down 9.6% YOY and 20% lower than the first quarter of 2025, due to lower prices and less volatility. Yet the integrated power unit outperformed expectations, with a 14% rise in profit to $574 mln.

Solar land grab – The UK ‘s push into solar power will be the largest land grab since the Enclosure Act in 1776, according to a new pressure group. The campaign to Stop Oversized Solar says up to 5% of cropland is now at risk of solar development, threatening to take farmland out of use in some of the UK’s best food-producing regions for decades, but more likely for good. Solar sites in the pipeline would cover around 655,000 acres, the equivalent of Derbyshire. “We struggle to get even 10% average energy yields on solar, so it’s much more logical to prioritise local solar schemes like commercial rooftop arrays or car park canopies instead of grid-scale mega schemes on good farmland,” Professor Tony Day of the Stop Oversized Solar said. “Now we could see these sensible schemes squeezed out while even more super-sized schemes get the grid connections.”

Last year saw a record for global total coal demand, with a rise of 1.5% to nearly 8.8 billion tonnes globally driven by power demand, but this will slow in 2025 and reverse by next year, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said in its mid-year coal update.

Registry updates - Version 3 of the UK's Woodland Carbon Code (WCC) is launching on Aug. 1 whilst the UK Land Carbon registry is moving to an enhanced platform on July 27, the registry announced in a release on Thursday. Developers can start using Version 3 of the code from the start of August, though projects already in development can continue to submit for validation or verification using Version 2.2 until June 30, 2026. All data on the UK Land Carbon Registry will migrate automatically to the enhanced platform except activity logs and S&P Global will notify users when the new platform is live.

Southeast Asia’s efforts to mitigate climate change are under growing strain as Western donors cut back on aid, tightening already limited budgets for energy transition in a region dominated by coal, an analysis released this week has found.

Solar jet fuel – Swiss International Air Lines (SWISS) has become the world’s first airline to integrate solar-derived jet fuel into its regular flight operations, the company announced on Thursday. Swiss clean-tech firm Synhelion delivered a 190-litre barrel of synthetic crude oil, produced using solar energy at its DAWN facility, to a refinery in northern Germany. Refined into certified Jet-A1 fuel, the solar-derived blend was then fed into SWISS’s infrastructure at Hamburg Airport and covered about 7% of the fuel used for a Hamburg-Zurich flight. The partners hailed the move as both a symbolic and substantial step for the global upscaling of solar aviation fuels. SWISS and Synhelion are now working towards sustainability certification under the EU’s renewable energy directive, targeting commercial-scale production and market entry from 2027.

During the summer period, with European activity quieter than usual, the focus of many EU carbon participants has turned to the market's correlation with gas prices, but with policy-driven changes to affect the supply dynamic in the EU ETS next year, analysts consider for how long the fuel will retain its strong influence over benchmark EUAs.

Premium UK carbon credits that provide genuine carbon removal alongside biodiversity and community impact are forecast to reach £500 per tonne by 2050, according to market analysis by a project developer, which outlined the price divergence between different credit quality levels.

India risks losing billions of dollars in trade revenue and millions of jobs to lower-carbon competitors unless it accelerates the transition to clean energy as global climate policies tighten, according to a report released Thursday.

SAF it up - LanzaTech was awarded £6.4 mln from the UK to accelerate development of its major SAF projects in the region, the company announced Tuesday. The grant was awarded from the UK government’s Advanced Fuels Fund under the Department for Transport. It supports LanzaTech’s Dragon 1 and 2 projects that convert recycled carbon fuel ethanol into SAF in South Wales, and convert waste CO2 and green hydrogen into ethanol for power-to-liquid SAF at a soon-to-be-determined location in the UK, respectively.