The Australian government is offering A$321 million ($224 mln) to trade-exposed companies covered under the Safeguard Mechanism to help them cut their emissions, it announced Thursday.

States planning to rely extensively on future carbon removal (CDR) to meet their climate targets risk falling short of international legal obligations under the Paris Agreement and customary international law, according to a peer-reviewed legal analysis published on Tuesday.

Roads have been linked to forest degradation or loss across an area roughly twice the size of Mexico, equivalent to around 11% of global forest cover, with impacts concentrated in the Global South, according to a new preprint study.

Carbon pricing could provide a major source of funding for social protection in developing countries, a new report has found.

India last week announced an INR 12.2 trillion ($133 billion) infrastructure spending boost in its latest budget, with the build-out expected to see rising carbon compliance costs for steel, and to a lesser extent cement, according to experts.

Countries in the global 'sunbelt' can access zero-carbon power more cheaply than in northern Europe, provided costs of capital are reasonable, and are developing a growing number of clean industrial projects, said an energy transitions expert.

January retirements across the voluntary carbon market (VCM) fell by nine million year-on-year, while issuances also slipped to levels last seen five years ago - with one registry failing to record any new supply for the past three months.

WWF Singapore has announced the establishment of a regional nature finance facility targeting 12,000 hectares of restoration projects across Southeast Asia.

The UN body helping to shape the Paris Agreement’s Article 6.4 carbon market has released a draft methodological tool aimed at standardising how emission reductions from biomass-related climate projects are calculated, key for crediting cookstoves projects.

Vietnam, together with two UN agencies, has launched a $102.5 million climate investment initiative aimed at curbing deforestation and emissions in key coffee-producing regions, the project partners announced last week.

New target - Japan's Sumitomo Corporation said it has updated its carbon neutrality target, in order to advance its efforts to address climate change issues. It previously aimed to reduce emissions by 50% by 2035 and achieve carbon neutrality by 2050, with 2019 as the base year. Now the trading company targets 30% emission reductions by 2035 from 2024 levels and carbon neutrality by 2050. The boundary of Scope 3 in its carbon neutrality target now also includes downstream leased assets and investments, as Sumitomo seeks to engage with the supply chain, the company said.

Trading activity on Indonesia’s carbon exchange slipped in January after a rebound in December, with volumes retreating as negotiated deals slowed, bourse data showed.

An Indian carbon removal developer on Wednesday announced it has raised $20 million in the first tranche of a roughly $45 mln Series B funding round led by a private equity firm.

The Australian government’s Net Zero Fund (NZF) will target investments with lower-rates of return than similar schemes in order to back emerging and novel decarbonisation technologies, Canberra announced Wednesday.

Still missing -  India said its next round of climate targets is still under internal consultations and awaiting formal clearance, offering an explanation for why the update has not been filed. The environment ministry told the parliament's upper house, in response to a question, that the revised Nationally Determined Contribution, including targets for 2031-35, will be submitted only after the process is completed and approved by the competent authority. It confirmed that India plans to declare an NDC extending to 2035, as flagged in its national statement at COP30 in Belem in November. No revised timeline for submission was given. Experts told Carbon Pulse last year that state elections and trade confrontations with Washington and Brussels had diverted the attention of senior officials.

More data - The Global Green Growth Institute has launched a request for proposals for consultancy services to design and implement a nationwide small and medium enterprise database in Papua New Guinea to increase access to climate capital, according to tender documents. The six-month project will be implemented under the Climate FIRST programme, funded by Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. The database is intended to consolidate information on both formal and informal businesses nationwide. The initiative aims to strengthen institutional coordination linked to PNG’s climate resilience and low-emissions transition, GGGI said. Tender submissions close on Mar. 3, 2026.

Buyout - Singapore-based private equity firm Affirma Capital said it has made the first investment from its Climate Transition Fund, agreeing to a full buyout of Indonesian renewables company Bright Nusantara Energy for about $35 mln. BNE operates 30 MW of hydro and solar assets, with 22 MW of near-term expansion, and 200 MW in the development pipeline. The deal marks the inaugural transaction for the KINETIK Affirma Capital Climate Transition Fund I, a dedicated Indonesia-focused climate fund targeting $200 mln. The fund is backed by Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, via the Private Infrastructure Development Group, alongside Standard Chartered Bank.

Debt settled - Australian coal mining company Fitzroy (CQ) has met its surrender obligations under the Safeguard Mechanism by surrendering 546,906 Australian Carbon Credit Units (ACCUs), the Clean Energy Regulator announced in its latest compliance update. The company entered into and enforceable undertaking arrangement last year after it was unable to meet its compliance obligations due to operational losses. The CER said the ACCU surrender volume represented Fitzroy's excess emissions position for the 2023-24 compliance period. The company has also conducted three feasibility studies to investigate carbon abatement opportunities, it added.

Green shoots - India's Ministry of Environment, Forest, and Climate Change, in response to a question asked in the parliament's upper house, said plantation and eco-restoration under the Green India Mission covered 36,572 ha over the past three years, backed by INR 3.5 bln ($38 mln) in central funding. Under another programme, launched in 2023, mangrove restoration has been approved over 4,536 ha of degraded coastal areas from FY 2024-25 onwards, the government said.

The Australian government’s green bank and an investment firm have announced A$81 million ($56 mln) to go towards a First Nations-led plantation project that is expected to generate some 5 mln Australian carbon credits.

We made it - The steelmaking unit of South Korea's Hyundai Motor has started mass production of low-carbon steel sheets that cut carbon emissions by around 20% compared with conventional blast furnace products. Hyundai Steel has successfully produced low-carbon steel sheets using a hybrid production process that blends molten metal from both electric arc furnaces and blast furnaces, which it claimed to be the first of its kind in the world. The carmaking group's two major brands, Hyundai Motor and Kia, plan to begin using low-carbon steel materials in some vehicles produced in South Korea and Europe starting this year, according to the Korea Herald.

Applications to submit land to the ETS have continued to fall in January, amid ongoing low confidence in the market, ministry data published this week showed.

Ground truthing – A new study published in Scientific Reports found that incorporating spatial coordinates and open-source map information can significantly enhance property-level forest carbon stock estimates, supporting the implementation of REDD+ projects in the carbon credit market. The researchers said that large-scale maps improve estimates when calibrated using geolocated field plots, including where plot data are limited. The paper added that carbon stock estimates produced using this approach can approach the accuracy of those based on high-quality local remote sensing such as UAV-LiDAR, and that spatial coordinates serve as useful covariates for predictions within the same areas where field plots are located.

Sectors covered under New Zealand’s ETS will be forced to cut emissions harder and faster to make up for the government loosening pollution requirements in the agriculture sector, according to the Climate Change Commission (CCC).