Cash for cows – New Zealand-based agtech company Ruminant BioTech has raised NZ$17 mln ($9.7 mln) in a Series A funding round, it announced on LinkedIn Wednesday. Led by existing investor Rosrain Investments and Cultivate Ventures, the round also included cash from financial services company Marex as well as additional investment from the public-private partnership AgriZero. The New Zealand Herald reported that the funding round valued the company at NZ$132 mln. Ruminant BioTech has developed a bolus for cattle, in which the orally-administered capsule suppresses methane emissions from the animal’s digestive tract.  The company said the funding round will enable it to launch its technology in Australia and New Zealand next year, as well as advance regulatory approvals in Brazil, Canada, Europe, the UK, and the US, and enter the carbon market.

Project developers can pay a fee of up to $50,000 to fast-track their verification approval requests through Verra, the standard body announced Wednesday.

COP30 was a tale of two climate summits: on the one side, divisive negotiations over deals that largely reaffirmed existing climate goals; but on the other, a stronger-than-ever show of how action is already spreading faster and farther.

The non-market approaches of Article 6.8 promote a needs-based, non-correspondingly adjusted source of climate finance that complements the Paris Agreement Crediting Mechanism (PACM) and Article 6.2, an African negotiator said on the sidelines of COP30.

India industrial biochar – India’s Jain Irrigation Systems has announced plans to establish what it calls the country’s first industrial-scale biochar project to convert agricultural and food industry residues, such as mango kernels, maize cobs, and cotton stalks, into biochar and carbon credits. The project aims to process around 100,000 tonnes of residues annually to produce roughly 25,000 tonnes of biochar and generate over 50,000 carbon credits. According to the company, this initiative will provide farmers with an extra income stream, reduce open burning of agro-waste, and support sustainable agriculture and carbon sequestration efforts.

ICAO has announced it is in the process of revising the CORSIA Annual Sector’s Growth Factor (SGF) for the year 2024.

The South Korean government has started a consultation process to collect industry opinions for the formulation of its broad green transformation plan.

North-Indian state of Himachal Pradesh this week partnered with a Singapore-based developer to roll out a 50,000-hectare afforestation, reforestation, and revegetation (ARR) project aimed at boosting farmer incomes.

Ethiopia and Singapore have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to collaborate on carbon credits during a visit of the Asian country's prime minister to Addis Ababa this week.

Not yet - New Zealand's Climate Change Minister Simon Watts on Wednesday said that the government has ruled out buying foreign carbon credits for this term to meet its NDC, NZ City reported. He added that it could be an option in the future but the country is currently focussed on domestic reductions. The island nation earlier this year submitted its 2035 NDC without setting out a specific ambition for the use of Article 6.

A Tokyo-listed technology company on Wednesday said it has developed an “ocean digital twin” that can significantly cut the time and cost of generating blue carbon credits, as Japan steps up efforts to scale restoration of seagrass and seaweed beds along its coast.

Coming soon(ish) - Thailand submitted a 205-section Draft Climate Change Act to the Cabinet this week, Nation Thailand reported. The wide-ranging bill would establish a national carbon market, MRV requirements, climate finance mechanisms, and adaptation measures. Still, Cabinet sign-off would only be the first step, which would then launch a lengthy process involving public consultations and parliamentary scrutiny. A senior official told Carbon Pulse earlier this year that the act would be passed next year.

The arrangements for next year’s climate talks, with Turkiye hosting and assuming the COP presidency and Australia leading the negotiations, is a “stepped-up model” of how the workload at the UN talks is usually distributed, said a veteran of past COPs.