COP30 delivered enough political signals to confirm the direction of international carbon markets, with investors now shaping the system’s future more than negotiations themselves, speakers said during a webinar on Wednesday.

Atlas for all – The carbon data platform Sylvera announced a partnership with Cecil, a nature data platform, last week, in which Cecil will host Sylvera’s Biomass Atlas dataset, a tool to quantify forest biomass. The companies also announced that the Biomass Atlas is now available to the public via Cecil and is intended to help guide carbon ratings and help organisations monitor plant biomass across individual sites or entire portfolios. The atlas uses ground reference datasets and satellite data to price tree canopy estimates and above ground biomass density globally.

California regulator ARB reported an issuance of nearly 511,100 compliance-eligible offsets over the last two weeks, growing the year-to-date (YtD) distribution to 15 million.

Canadian regulators and sustainability leaders on Tuesday said the pause on mandatory climate-risk disclosure is creating a competitiveness problem for domestic companies, urging firms to continue preparing for reporting requirements even as political and regulatory uncertainty persists.

With all eyes on Brazil at the Amazon COP, there were still plenty of climate and carbon market developments from nearly a dozen other Latin American countries over the course of the two weeks. 

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.

Energy companies being sued for climate damages by two local Colorado governments submitted their final plea Tuesday asking the US Supreme Court (SCOTUS) to take up a case that could set a nationwide precedent for climate liability cases against oil and gas producers.

Assisted migration of tree species for reforestation and restoration is becoming increasingly important amid Canada’s forest-adaptation challenges, a panel of experts said on Tuesday, as the risks of proactively moving seed sources are far smaller than the risks of leaving climate-stressed stands to fail amid wildfire, pests, and rapid warming.

The Q4 California-Quebec current vintage carbon auction sold at a more than $1 discount to secondary market prices the day before last week's sale, settling below $29.

Colourful feedback – Rainbow, a voluntary carbon standard body, is seeking feedback on version 7.0 of its Standard Rules and Procedures Manual, which aligns with key frameworks, including ICVCM requirements, the CRCF Regulation and Implementing Rules, and CORSIA requirements. The consultation is open until Dec. 28, and the final version of the standard will be published by early Feb. 2026.

Mining companies and carbon removal (CDR) buyers warned on Tuesday that CDR projects at mine sites must overcome complex measurement, reporting, and verification (MRV) rules, policy gaps, and social-licence concerns as stakeholders push the technology toward billlion-tonne-scale deployment.

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.

Barclay’s take on COP30 – COP30 revealed a “quiet shift”, less captivated by the next breakthrough and more focused on the specifics of meeting global climate goals, Barclays’ Daniel Hanna wrote in a blog post. In Hanna’s view, the summit highlighted Brazil’s Tropical Forest Forever Facility as a model for scalable, place based finance. The conference underscored three things relevant to green finance: 1) Target the real bottlenecks that block capital, 2) Create financing models that can be replicated, 3) Anchor everything in data, integrity and governance.

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.

A US-based startup working to reduce agricultural supply chain emissions has raised $4 million in Series A financing to scale its operations, it said last week.

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. 

Discussions on international carbon trading at COP30 exposed tensions about the function of a technical review process, key for transparency in new Paris Agreement markets, which may have significant implications for those seeking to sell reductions from Article 5.2 REDD+ programmes via Article 6.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

New York Governor Kathy Hochul’s (D) administration launched on Tuesday an appeal of an October court decision that ordered the state to release regulations for its planned cap-and-invest programme, dubbed NYCI.