Hydrogen push – Two European engineering companies, MP Industries and Path2 Hydrogen, announced a strategic partnership on Wednesday to develop a pipeline of hydrogen across the continent. The two will collaborate on feasibility studies and project implementations, coming together to advance the hydrogen market across Europe by covering the full value chain. The announcement follows a joint letter from Austria, Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, and Spain, urging the European Commission to overhaul green hydrogen rules. The countries alleged the current framework is stalling investment.

Including municipal waste incineration in the EU Emissions Trading System (ETS) is unlikely to trigger a shift back to landfilling because policy, infrastructure and contracts leave very little room for that to happen, according to a new report for Zero Waste Europe (ZWE) published on Thursday.

A senior Spanish government official restated their continued support for the EU’s Emissions Trading System (ETS), as the bloc prepares for an upcoming review of the scheme’s design this summer.

Jet fuel crisis - Trade body Airlines for Europe, representing carriers such as Brussels Airlines, Lufthansa, and Air France-KLM,  has written to the European Commission urging immediate intervention to avert a looming aviation fuel shortage triggered by the widening Middle East conflict and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, according to VisaHQ. The letter calls for centrally coordinated fuel allocation, a suspension of the EU Emissions Trading Scheme for aviation, and temporary relief from national ticket taxes. Europe could see strategic jet fuel reserves depleted within three weeks if the strait remains blocked, according to analysts. Airlines fear the combination of costlier detours and constrained supply will lead to widespread cancellations, especially on long-haul sectors. The Commission is preparing a crisis package for Apr. 22, but has not committed to the airlines’ requests.

Lawmakers in the European Parliament environment committee approved a deal on Wednesday to keep allowances in the Emissions Trading System for heating and transport (ETS2)'s Market Stability Reserve (MSR2) fully valid until 2033, with partial validity until 2035.

Wildfires are still an underestimated risk among carbon project developers, despite increasingly sophisticated satellite data that can warn developers about where risk is likeliest to occur and alert them as soon as any fire breaks out, experts said at a conference Wednesday.

Clear and predictable carbon price signals, alongside financial support mechanisms, will be needed to unlock industrial decarbonisation under the EU ETS, experts in Barcelona said Wednesday.

European carbon allowances gave up some of Tuesday's price gain after failing to make a convincing break above a key psychological and technical price area, even as weekly position data showed speculative traders beginning to rebuild long positions after the steep sell-off of the first quarter, while energy markets reflected a mixed outlook of rising hopes for peace talks as well as a tightening blockade of the Strait of Hormuz.

A Finnish state-backed development fund has signed a $15 million loan agreement with a Panamanian-based sustainable forestry venture managed by a global emerging markets investment firm, in a deal aimed at expanding reforestation, sustainable timber production, and long-term environmental impact initiatives.

Proposed changes to the EU’s Market Stability Reserve (MSR) are unlikely to affect carbon prices in the near term but could leave a larger volume of allowances in the system later in the decade, analysts said on Wednesday.

A senior European Commission official said that the EU will favour a centralised purchasing framework to acquire international carbon credits to help meet its 2040 climate target, rather than rely on individual companies to procure them directly.

The US remains a "disruptor" in upcoming UN talks about cutting emissions from shipping, although the oil crisis has helped to sharpen the business case shifting to clean fuels, experts said on Wednesday.

Whisky galore - A south of Scotland distillery claims to be the first in the world to use a new environmentally-friendly way of producing the heat needed to make whisky, by using a heat storage system is used to generate the steam required for the distilling process, according to the BBC.  Annandale Distillery in Dumfries and Galloway wants to be a pioneer in producing "low-carbon" whisky. It has commissioned a project which, it says, produces a heat of 1,200C using low- and zero-carbon electricity, rather than fossil fuels. This is a first - not just for the whisky industry or Scotland - but globally, David Thomson, a co-founder of the distillery, told the BBC.

Hotting up - Global emissions reached a record of 37.2 bln tonnes of CO2 in 2025 and, although the annual growth rate has flattened to 0.7%, there is 50% chance the remaining carbon budget for limiting global warming to 1.5C will be exhausted by 2029, according to an academic paper in Nature Reviews Earth & Environment.  Global CO2 emissions from fossil fuel combustion and industrial processes increased by 0.7% within 2025, the researchers found. However, large-scale deployment of clean electricity sources during the year avoided 10.3 bln tonnes of global CO2 emissions, so that power sector emissions declined by minus 0.9% relative to 2024. China and India entered an emission plateau owing to massive renewable expansion, but the US and EU saw emission rebound following policy reversals and clean energy stagnation.

British body BSI has unveiled a revised version of its environmental management systems (EMS) standard, with the ISO also updating its international version, aiming to help organisations better align with rising climate commitments, ESG priorities, and tightening regulatory requirements.

Carbon pricing policies must be flexibly designed to ensure they can be tweaked to align with political realities, in order to retain electorate support for climate goals, said experts at a conference.

The upcoming revision of the EU’s Emissions Trading System (ETS) will aim to turn the bloc’s carbon market into an “investment machine” while maintaining a rules-based system to ensure price stability, a senior European Commission official has said.

Prague and Berlin received European Commission approval this week to provide state aid to projects that can help to reduce emissions – by adding biomethane production stations in Czechia, and supporting peatland rewetting on farmland in Germany.

Switzerland-based Gold Standard has launched a public consultation on a new analytical tool designed to tackle the risk of lock-in to high-emission or suboptimal technologies under its carbon crediting framework.

Measuring biodiversity co-benefits in carbon markets could offer nature tech companies an opportunity to increase revenues, at a time when the sector is set to face headwinds due to funding challenges, according to experts.

Airlines preparing for compliance under the UN's international aviation offsetting scheme are running into a shortage of host country approvals needed to use carbon credits, even as project supply continues to grow.

Technology developers have launched a 12-month pilot of a methane removal system aboard a bulk carrier, marking what the companies say is the first deployment of the technology under normal commercial shipping conditions, with ambitions to generate Gold Standard-certified carbon credits from the mitigation.

Analysts have slashed their forecasts for EU carbon prices, which they say are now being driven more by political risk than fundamentals.