Decarbonisation deal - Holcim, a Switzerland-headquartered multinational building materials company, has invested in Capsol Technologies to support the scaling of Capsol’s post-combustion carbon capture and heat recovery technology. Capsol, a Norway-listed company, develops carbon capture systems based on hot potassium carbonate (HPC), a mature chemical absorption process used to remove CO2 from industrial gas streams. The companies said the investment follows a CapsolGo demonstration project planned for 2025 at Holcim’s Dotternhausen cement plant in Germany and forms part of Holcim’s broader decarbonisation strategy.

Carbon leakage has been estimated to offset between 5-30% of domestic emissions reductions in most recent studies, according to a new review that proposes a framework for analysing the spillover effects of mitigation efforts.

In his 12th letter from the COP30 presidency, Brazilian COP President Andre Correa do Lago has introduced a two-tier multilateralism framework to accelerate climate action, warning that consensus-based decision-making alone is too slow to match the pace of global warming.

While a dozen EU member states support exempting fertilisers from the EU's carbon border fee, the European Parliament is taking a more cautious line.

European carbon prices clawed back all of Monday's 1.4% decline despite a volatile and indecisive session, highlighted by a particularly weak auction result that did not deter bulls, with traders focusing their attention on Wednesday's Commitment of Traders report, while natural gas prices fell back even amid updated forecasts for colder weather.

Mozambican LNG - The African Development Bank (AfDB) will provide a $150 mln loan to support the development of Mozambique's Coral North floating LNG project, it announced last week. The offshore liquefaction plant, led by Italy's Eni, is expected to cost more than $7 bln and have a capacity of 3.55 mln tonnes of LNG per year. It would follow Mozambique's first LNG plant, Coral South, which started operating in 2022. The project's developers have committed to set aside some of the LNG for clean cooking access, domestic industrial development, gas exports to the Southern African Development Community region, and gas-to-power projects. These will enhance the region's energy security and resilience, the AfDB said.

Issuances were increasingly concentrated in newer vintages (less than 4 years old) in 2025, which is consistent with stronger buyer preferences linked to integrity considerations, according to a report from an NGO, published on Tuesday. 

VC for climate tech - Venture capital firm 2150 has raised €210 mln for its second climate tech fund, taking its total assets under management to €500 mln. The London-based company attracted 34 investment from across Asia, Europe, and the US, including a US-based church group and two family offices in Europe. The commitments reflect investor confidence in its strategy to back tech startups working to reshape cities and the industries that power them, it said. (Impact Alpha)

Belgian biochar pilot – Belgian wastewater utility Aquafin has secured funding from the Helios Foundation to build a pyrolysis and drying unit at the Menen treatment plant, aiming to convert over 5,000 tonnes of sewage sludge annually into 600 tonnes of biochar. The project is expected to avoid more than 2,000 tonnes of CO2e emissions per year and capture an additional 640 tonnes of biogenic CO2, supporting decarbonisation in sectors such as metallurgy, construction, and soil remediation. The investment amount was not diclosed.

EVs overtaking - Sales of electric vehicles (EVs) overtook petrol cars in the EU for the first time in Dec. 2025, according to industry group the European Automobile Manufacturers' Association (ACEA). Battery EV registrations reached 217,898, up 51% year-on-year from Dec. 2024, while sales of petrol cars in the EU fell 19% year-on-year to 216,492 last month. Overall in 2025, EVs reached 17.4% of the market share in the bloc, up from 13.6% the previous year. Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, and France accounted for 62% of registrations of new battery-electric cars in the bloc last year. While petrol car registrations fell by 18.7% across 2025, with all major markets seeing a decrease. Hybrid vehicles remain the largest segment of the EU car market at sales of 324,799 in Dec. 2025, but sales of cars powered by electricity are growing even faster. (Carbon Brief)

Helsinki-based carbon removal (CDR) registry Puro.earth has launched a premium service aimed at enabling more frequent issuance of verified carbon removal credits, seeking to shorten the time between production and market availability.

The potential adoption of a global price on shipping emissions later this year requires regaining the support of countries who were previously in favour but voted for a one-year delay in October, after a US-led opposition campaign, experts told Carbon Pulse.

Contrail impacts - The European Commission and Eurocontrol have released a second version of the Non-CO2 Aviation Effects Tracking System (NEATS), an IT tool for monitoring, reporting, and verifying the non-CO2 climate impacts of aviation such as contrails and nitrogen oxides. The tool allows aircraft operators to calculate the climate impact of their flights, and relies largely on the PyContrails Python library, which models contrails. The upcoming version 3 will support EU ETS reporting for 2025 emissions and will introduce dedicated interfaces for aircraft operators, verifiers, and competent authorities.      

A technical assessment released this week by the UNFCCC found that Sudan's updated national forest emission levels were now mostly transparent, complete, and broadly aligned with international guidelines, marking clear progress since its last review in 2020.

Peatland payback - Peatland restoration can deliver climate mitigation benefits within a few decades, according to a new paper by the University of Eastern Finland. The results suggest that peatland restoration can contribute to between 2 and 6 CO2-equivalent tonnes per hectare of annual climate mitigation, in a 100-year assessment perspective - suggesting that restoring weakly productive forestry-drained peatlands could play a key role in contributing to the land-use sector emission scenarios in Finland. The study focused on nutrient-poor and acidic peatlands, where growth of Sphagnum moss can result in a temporarily effective carbon sink.  

Using cheap water sensors could help cut the cost of monitoring, reporting, and verification (MRV) for carbon removal from enhanced rock weathering (ERW), but the method requires site-specific calibration and periodic verification to be reliable, according to a study published last week.

A consumer healthcare company has noticeably cut its indirect emissions by applying a carbon price equivalent to the EU's Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) when selecting suppliers in its tendering process.

The EU should avoid using only net emissions targets, which conflate genuine emissions reductions with removals, due to the uncertain nature of both natural carbon sinks and engineered removals, according to experts.

Two companies have signed an initial agreement to develop a cross-border carbon capture, utilisation, and storage (CCUS) project in the Baltic Sea region that they say will be transformative for industrial polluters and and e-fuels producers.

Liberia’s Carbon Markets Authority (CMA) has appointed a global consultancy to support international climate finance mobilisation and develop a national carbon market framework, backed by 100% grant-based or concessional funding.

Ocean alkalinity enhancement (OAE) could help lower atmospheric CO2 and ease ocean acidification, but its effectiveness declines over time due to carbon cycle feedbacks, a new modelling study has found.

Hidden dangers - The UK government has published a report into the risks the country will face if global ecosystems collapse due to climate change, which found the degradation of forests, rivers, and coral reefs could lead to a "global competition for food" beginning in the 2030s. Previously blocked by the govt over fears the findings were too negative, an internal version described the risks of mass migration to the UK as a result of rainforest die-back in the Congo and rivers drying up in South Asia, giving rise to more populist politics and greater pressure on strained infrastructure. The authors said the drying of Himalayan rivers could escalate tensions between China, India and Pakistan, potentially leading to nuclear war, and that NATO could be drawn into conflicts over remaining breadbaskets in Russia and Ukraine. The govt is hiding the true danger of climate change from people, a source told the Times, adding that honest conversation is urgently needed about the risks to prosperity.

The EU can now justify boosting renewable energy spending on grounds of security alone amid a more unstable world, an international policy institute has argued.

India will not be granted exemption from the EU’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) under a landmark free trade agreement signed in New Delhi today, officials stressed, saying the two sides will instead open a “technical dialogue” to ease implementing issues.

A Dutch climate technology startup focused on certifying Scope 3 emission reductions in the agri-food sector has raised €1.25 million in a new funding round to accelerate its expansion into the US and Brazil.

Up to £100 billion in investment will be needed by 2050 to deploy long-duration energy storage (LDES) at the scale required to stabilise a renewable-powered grid and meet rising AI-related demand, according to a roadmap published Monday.

Belgium’s updated climate roadmap for 2030 shows higher ambition but still falls short on renewables and energy efficiency, the European Commission said in an assessment of the country’s National Energy and Climate Plan (NECP), released on Monday.

A London-headquartered company working with biodiversity units has announced an assessment framework, designed to give buyers more confidence that nature and carbon credits represent credible environmental outcomes.

The Saudi state-backed Regional Voluntary Carbon Market Company (VCM) has forged a strategic partnership with Qatar-based international carbon standard the Global Carbon Council (GCC) to include GCC’s credits on its exchange.