Endangerment dispute - Sixteen health and environmental groups have filed a petition with the US EPA outlining severe flaws in its rule to repeal the Endangerment Finding and motor vehicle climate pollution standards, and describing how the Clean Air Act requires the agency to reconsider that damaging action. The petition focuses on the repeal’s claims that reducing climate pollution from US cars and trucks is futile. The petition follows another by a coalition of 40 US states, cities, and territories that have asked a federal appeals court to overturn the repeal.    

The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) has approved a Verra methodology for the improved management of rice systems for use in the first two compliance phases of UN aviation sector offsetting scheme CORSIA, the standard announced on Thursday.

A US District Court judge rejected a request from the US Department of Justice to block Hawaii from challenging fossil fuel companies regarding climate change impacts.

Paraguay's government expects investments from Singapore in its carbon credit projects to exceed $1 billion, a minister said on Wednesday.

California Carbon Allowance (CCA) futures continued to dip following the release of a 15-day notice of proposed programme updates earlier this week, which traders said adds to the uncertainty surrounding the market via changes to the Manufacturing Decarbonization Incentive (MDI) mechanism.

The Trump administration appears set to preserve $23.9 billion in US DOE grants, including previously terminated funding for direct air capture (DAC) and hydrogen hubs.

Efforts to build a fossil fuel phaseout coalition are being framed as complementary rather than alternative to the UN climate process, with stakeholders stressing broader participation at a Thursday media event.

Ready, set, go - The SunZia Wind project, the largest renewable energy development in the US, has begun generating electricity ahead of full operations, delivering wind power from New Mexico to California via a 550-mile (885 km) transmission line, E&E News reported. The 3.5GW project is already contributing to record wind generation in California and is expected to supply power to around 3 mln people, as demand rises from AI and data centres. Its launch comes despite federal policy headwinds and years of permitting delays and legal challenges.

The Trump administration argued in a court filing last week that its planned withdrawal from the UN climate treaty reinforces – rather than weakens – its argument that New York’s climate liability superfund law unlawfully intrudes on federal authority.

One of the world’s largest timberland investment managers announced on Thursday it has achieved a first close of $370 million in commitments to invest in Latin America.

Over 50 million credits were retired over the first three months of 2026, the highest quarterly figure since Q1 2025, while the price of allowances under the UN's offsetting scheme for global aviation have dropped by around 25% since the turn of the year.

Gas leak - The European Commission is preparing to strengthen coordination at the EU level on gas storage refilling and potential oil stock releases in an effort to contain surging energy prices linked to the Iran war, according to a leaked draft seen by Montel on Thursday. The draft also indicates that the EU could cut its reliance on gas by optimising existing power generation capacity. This would include boosting the availability of nuclear and hydropower plants, delaying maintenance where feasible, and developing contingency plans for drought conditions. Regarding gas storage, the plan - set to be presented next Wednesday - states that the Commission will closely monitor and coordinate with member states on the timing of market purchases to help avoid price spikes caused by simultaneous buying. Current EU gas storage levels stand at just over 29%, based on data from Gas Infrastructure Europe (GIE). For oil, the Commission would conduct scenario analyses and recommend both the timing and scale of any potential stock releases, the document says.

A Canadian cleantech firm has struck a deal to acquire a Quebec-based biocarbon pilot facility and associated intellectual property, alongside securing a five-year offtake agreement, as it moves to scale production of low-carbon fuels for heavy industry.

European and UK carbon allowance prices both rose to a 9-week high on Thursday after the UK announced it would discontinue its carbon surcharge for fuel combustion, with EUA prices testing a key technical level at the end of the day but failing to find enough support to extend its recent run of gains further.

The EU’s top court ruled on Thursday that Hungary cannot impose a tax on CO2 emissions from installations receiving significant free EU ETS allowances where that measure neutralises the value of those permits and undermines the bloc’s carbon market design.

A Bolivian-based biochar producer has clinched a three-year deal to sell 500,000 carbon removal credits.

Gaps in cost calculations and delayed implementing rules are complicating investment and pricing decisions for companies under the EU’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM), experts said on Thursday at the European Climate Summit in Barcelona.

The European Commission has no plans to propose a dedicated Emissions Trading System (ETS) to curb greenhouse gas emissions from the agriculture sector, a top official has confirmed.

A Paris-based carbon project developer launched a request for proposals (RFP) on Thursday, seeking applications from restoration and reforestation projects, as well as Article 6-aligned cookstove and water initiatives.

UK tree felling - Harrogate Spring Water, a subsidiary of Danone, is drawing criticism for a plan to remove some 1,000 trees from a 20-year-old community woodland in Yorkshire planted by school children, in order to expand its bottling plant, according to the Pinewoods Conservation Group. Critics say the plan goes against Danone's high-profile Forest Policy, which pledges to achieve a verified deforestation- and conversion-free supply chain by 2025, and become forest-positive by 2030.

The UK government intends to remove the Carbon Price Support (CPS) tax on power plant emissions in two years, because it is no longer needed, a government official confirmed on Thursday.

A large REDD project is set to receive its first issuance in three years, the developer has told Carbon Pulse, flooding the market with millions of carbon credits, after Indonesia’s Ministry of Forestry allowed local forestry projects to trade internationally.

A pause in Microsoft’s carbon removal purchases should galvanise corporates to buy into a market that sorely needs them, the market’s second largest buyer told Carbon Pulse. 

Russian offsets – Moscow-based petrochemical company Sibur and an online retailer have launched a tool aimed at enabling consumers to offset carbon from home deliveries. Retailer Wildberries & Russ now offers customers the option to make their order 'carbon neutral' with Russian carbon credits, according to the Russian Carbon Units Registry. Demand for offsets from Russian companies has increased since the start of 2025, according to analysis from AlliedOffsets.

A carbon insurance company has announced a new underwriting partnership with a division of an insurance marketplace.

A Chilean programme to expand the market penetration of electric vehicles has obtained bilateral authorisation from the governments of Switzerland and Chile, a Swiss procurer of Article 6 credits has reported.

Windfall tax – The European Commission should tax heavily the excess profits oil companies earn due to war-driven price hikes, a group of NGOs said in an open letter shared on Thursday. Non-profits including T&E, CAN Europe, and Oxfam urged the EU's executive to use the levy to support European households cope with the economic impacts of the Middle East war. Oil companies are expected to make a €24 bln windfall just from road fuel in 2026, according to T&E's oil profit tracker.

Lower the LRF, Uniper says – The EU should be flexible with the ETS and its 2040 emission reduction goals, according to German energy company, Uniper. With respect to the EU ETS, the bloc should consider lowering the linear reduction factor (LRF) Kavita Ahluwalia, the firm's senior vice president, told Montel at the European Climate Summit in Barcelona. Various MEPs have also taken this stance, with Poland in March discussing LRF reduction.

Solid state batteries – Greater Bay Technology (GBT), a Chinese battery manufacturer, aims to launch the world’s first mass-producible all-solid-state battery this year, according to Electrek. The company has announced its first A-sample all-solid-state battery cells are ready to roll off the production line. The A-sample battery cells contain no liquid electrolyte and successfully passed needle penetration, extrusion, and thermal shock tests without a fire or explosion. With a single cell energy density of 260-500 Wh/kg, considerably higher than traditional liquid lithium-ion batteries, the cells enable a longer driving range, faster charging, and more interior space. GBT has previously set the world record for the “fastest charging technology for electric vehicles” in 2024 with its Extreme Fast Charging (XFC) batteries, which recharged from 0% to 80% in just 7.5 minutes.

Don't deviate – The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has warned the EU against loosening its fiscal rules in response to the Middle East war, the FT reported. This follows a suggestion from Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni that the bloc may need to change tack and move away from measures aimed at reducing public deficits. The IMF's fiscal affairs department, however, spoke out against this idea, urging the EU to keep guardrails in place.

European governments need to introduce strict penalties for companies that fail to meet new CO2 storage requirements, a new report has argued, as policymakers race to secure enough capacity to meet the bloc’s 2030 climate goals.

The European Commission has cleared three new state aid schemes in Bulgaria, Germany and Slovenia that will temporarily shield energy‑intensive industries from high power prices, in exchange for binding decarbonisation investments aligned with the EU’s Clean Industrial Deal.

A large utility in Japan has teamed up with an agricultural project developer to conduct a feasibility study, which could potentially create the foundation of a new methodology under the Joint Crediting Mechanism (JCM).

New analysis has compared several reform options for the Market Stability Reserve (MSR2) in the EU's upcoming carbon market for road transport and heating fuels (ETS2), finding that allowing permit releases from the supply-balancing mechanism to continue beyond 2030 stands to have the most significant bearish price impact.

Switzerland has started reporting industrial carbon removals for the first time in its greenhouse gas inventory, which will be submitted to the UN Climate Change Secretariat in mid-April 2026.

Prices on the EU’s upcoming Emissions Trading System for road transport and heating fuels, known as ETS2, are expected to see a slower rise under reform plans presented last year, with prices peaking at €132/tCO2 in 2035, according to new projections.

A Toronto-headquartered digital monitoring, reporting, and verification (dMRV) company announced the acquisition of holdings in a digital biochar project development platform on Thursday.

The UK's largest power plant – the Drax biomass station – received a record of nearly £1 billion in subsidies last year, despite also being the country's top emitter, according a think tank's analysis. 

The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) Council has approved two more programmes as eligible under the Carbon Offsetting and Reduction Scheme for International Aviation (CORSIA) for its first phase, covering 2024 to 2026.

Carbon registry Gold Standard has open a call for feedback on several tools and tweaks to its crediting framework this week.

Power generated by China's thermal power plants in the first quarter of the year expanded 3.7% from a year ago, while momentum in the wind power sector slowed, according to data released Thursday by the National Bureau of Statistics of China (NBS).

The EU's Green Deal climate goals are realistic and can make the continent stronger and more independent of oil and gas crises – with a bigger push on wind and solar power and electrification, according to new research.

A London-based measuring, reporting, and verification (MRV) firm has launched an upgraded tool to inform investment in nature conservation projects.

Barely budged - New Zealand published its latest GHG Inventory for 1990-2024, showing gross emissions between 2023-24 fell by just 0.1% to 75.8 MtCO2e, while net emissions decreased by 2%. The data showed fractional emissions reductions across waste, agriculture, industrial processes, and land use, land-use change and forestry, were offset by an 0.8% increase in energy due to lower hydro-electricity generation. Greater use of nitrogen fertiliser and higher milk production from cows also drove emissions increase, the data showed.

Indonesia’s Ministry of Forestry has issued a new regulation designed to allow local forestry carbon projects to trade internationally, with a major project now expected to be issued a record amount of carbon credits.

Power of data - Amazon has signed power purchase agreements with nine renewable energy projects across New South Wales and Victoria to supply its Australian data centres, boosting its renewable capacity from about 430MW to nearly 1GW, the Guardian reported. The projects include wind, solar, and battery storage, such as Victoria’s Golden Plains 2 wind farm and a solar-battery site on a former coal mine, with Amazon saying this supports its goal of net-zero emissions by 2040 and helps stabilise the grid. However, the expansion has raised concerns about data centres’ high energy and water use, with critics questioning whether these deals add new renewable supply and calling for greater transparency on their overall impact.

Bad timing - A major fire broke out at Viva Energy’s Geelong refinery in Victoria on Wednesday in the gasoline production unit, prompting a large emergency response but causing no reported injuries, Reuters reported. The refinery—one of only two in Australia and supplying over half of Victoria’s fuel and about 10% nationally—was forced to cut operations to minimum levels, with petrol production expected to be impacted more than diesel and jet fuel. Authorities are still assessing the damage, but the incident has raised concerns about fuel supply and prices, particularly given existing global oil market disruptions.

This week’s release of surrender data for the second year of Australia’s reformed Safeguard Mechanism has highlighted both the positives and drawbacks of the scheme, depending on who you ask.