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.

The UK government has simultaneously raised and cut a series of climate-related levies and taxes in its new budget as part of its search for additional fiscal headroom, with certain changes directly contradicting one another, according to experts.

The UK will phase out free allocation of UKAs to industries covered by its Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism over a period of nine years starting in 2027, the government confirmed in a statement on Wednesday.

European carbon allowance prices weakened slightly on Wednesday amid a similar trend amongst all energy markets, as traders digested weekly positioning data that showed the first decrease in investment funds' net length in a month.

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.

Guinea is set to become the first West African country to introduce a carbon pricing instrument, and the first on the continent to apply it to a specific sector, according to a consultancy that has advised the government. 

A European airline will seek to compensate its emissions next year with a balanced portfolio of up to 1 million tonnes of carbon credits, a portion of which from carbon removals, but needs more regulatory clarity before purchasing CORSIA-eligible credits, an industry conference heard on 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.

AfDB loan - The African Development Bank Group has approved a $500 mln loan to the Nigeria government to finance the second phase of the Economic Governance and Energy Transition Support Programme. This will support the country's energy transition and help to expand energy access and reduce energy poverty. It will also back measures to promote climate change adaptation and mitigation, including the introduction of energy-efficiency standards for electrical appliances. The policy-based operation is for fiscal years 2024 and 2025.

A regional African court has found a civil society appeal against a controversial East African oil project inadmissible due to a late filing, a decision campaigners described as “very disappointing” during a Wednesday press briefing.

The UK government is introducing certificates to allow for oil and gas production on or near existing North Sea fields, while ploughing ahead with a promise not to issue new exploration licences, it announced on Wednesday as part of a wider strategy for revamping the country's hydrocarbons hub. 

The European Parliament on Wednesday backed a one-year postponement of the EU’s landmark anti-deforestation regulation, offering businesses more time to comply with rules requiring proof that key products sold in the bloc are not sourced from deforested land.

The EU’s new carbon market for road transport and heating fuels (ETS2) is coming under renewed pressure as the European Commission prepares proposals to dilute its planned 2035 ban on the sale of new petrol and diesel cars, analysts say.

Nigeria's COP30 delegation under fire – Nigeria’s decision to send a 749-member delegation to the COP30 international climate summit in Belem, Brazil, has sparked controversy, with critics arguing the size has undermined the summit’s credibility and appeared driven more by political patronage than climate-action urgency, Punch Nigeria reported. Many observers, including former presidential candidate Peter Obi, described the decision as a “misplaced priority”, pointing out that resources spent on travel could instead be used for poverty alleviation and domestic climate adaptation efforts. The government, meanwhile, justified the delegation size by noting that many attendees come from diverse sectors such as government, private sector, and civil society, and claimed a multidisciplinary approach is necessary for effective representation.

An early leak of the UK's budget measures shows that a rumoured mileage-based charge on electric and plug-in hybrid cars will be coming into place and is expected to raise £1.4 billion by 2029-30.

Decarbonising military aircraft offers a range of operational and combat benefits, a senior officer in the UK’s Royal Air Force (RAF) told an aviation conference this week. 

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

The EU’s landmark Emissions Trading Scheme for road transport and heating fuels (ETS2) risks further delay as several countries are planning to use the one-year postponement agreed last month as leverage in negotiations over the EU’s long-term budget, a think tank has warned, recommending the introduction of a price corridor to end political wrangling.

A new framework has been launched to value the full climate contributions a company makes on its journey to net zero, including investing in carbon credits.

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.

A Canadian agricultural lender has invested in a UK-based enhanced rock weathering (ERW) company, in a deal the firm said would support a threefold scale-up of its operations in Canada in 2026.

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.

A UK-based biochar developer teased some positive results from testing the addition of biochar to asphalt at COP30, opening up a dialogue on more industrial end-uses for the carbon removal (CDR) product.