Refocused – Equinor has scrapped its 2030 renewable energy capacity target and dropped a 2035 goal for CO2 transport and storage, as it shifts focus towards higher oil and gas output. The Norwegian energy major said in a strategy update Tuesday that it would no longer aim for 10-12 GW of installed renewable energy capacity by 2030, replacing the target with an outlook for power generation that also includes gas-fired electricity, energy storage, and trading activities, Reuters reported. The company plans to allocate around 10% of capital expenditure to its power business, while still expecting production to rise fourfold to more than 20 TWh by 2030, mainly from projects already under construction. Equinor also dropped a target to transport and store 30-50 mln tonnes of CO2 per year by 2035, with Irene Rummelhoff, head of its midstream, marketing, and processing business, saying the company had secured enough storage space to meet the goal if demand emerges but would not move ahead of the market.

The Paris Agreement Crediting Mechanism (PACM), a UN-regulated carbon market grounded in Article 6.4 rules, is guiding national frameworks, voluntary market (VCM) standards, and even other UN schemes, experts and country delegates said on the sidelines of climate talks in Bonn.

Retirements across the voluntary carbon market (VCM) were strong across the first five months of 2026  with volumes no longer concentrated at lower price points, according to new analysis, but removals purchases were down by 50% over the same period with questions over whether recent demand boosts will be enough to keep developers heads above water.

Carbon removal (CDR) buyers club Frontier launched more than $900 million in a new advance market commitment (AMC) while onboarding two major AI and technology buyers.

An ocean carbon removal research initiative on Wednesday unveiled plans to launch a $5 million funding round aimed at expanding a global research network for ocean alkalinity enhancement (OAE), as interest grows in marine CDR technologies but questions remain over their scalability, environmental impacts, and monitoring requirements.

A project developer operating in Brazil hopes that a new rating will help its Amazon project set a benchmark to restore the credibility of REDD+, a representative told Carbon Pulse.

Verra and S&P Global Energy have announced that their "next-generation" environmental registry platform will officially go live on July 27, which they say marks a major upgrade for global carbon market infrastructure.

An environmental commodities broker and an energy trader have launched a second carbon auction, offering 100,000 Article 6- and CORSIA-labelled credits.

The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) opened a public consultation on Wednesday on a draft international standard for net zero transition planning.

After more than a decade teaching smallholder farmers how to turn crop waste into biochar, the leaders of a climate tech firm said that beyond making the biochar itself, the real complexity lies in building the relationships and infrastructure needed to sell high‑durability carbon removal credits.

Malaysia and South Korea have agreed to cooperate on biogas development and carbon market initiatives, including potential Article 6 projects under the Paris Agreement, they announced this week.

Environmental activists are demanding answers about several agricultural carbon credit projects in Ukraine, arguing that insufficient transparency surrounding the initiatives raises concerns about the integrity of future carbon credits that could be generated under the voluntary carbon market.

SAF supply deal - EcoCeres has extended its sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) supply agreement with British Airways (BA) until the end of 2030, according to an announcement Wednesday. The deal terms state that the company's SAF is expected to help BA avoid around 198,000 tonnes of lifecycle carbon emissions compared with using the same volume of fossil jet fuel - equivalent to offsetting around 341,000 round-trip economy-class seats on direct flights between London and New York. EcoCeres's SAF is made from 100% waste-based feedstocks such as used cooking oil and can achieve lifecycle GHG emissions reductions of up to 94.4% compared to fossil jet fuel. The extended commitment reflects the importance of long-term partnership across the aviation supply chain to support the SAF market scale, said the release.

A new satellite-based assessment has found that industrial logging concessions across Africa's Congo Basin emit around 87.5 million tonnes of CO2 annually, while widespread adoption of reduced-impact logging practices could cut those emissions by up to 58% and unlock hundreds of millions of dollars in carbon finance.

Forming ties - Japan's Green Carbon said it signed a new agreement with the Department of Agriculture and Environment in Vietnam's An Giang province, which lies in the rice producing Mekong Delta, to develop carbon credits from methane reductions in rice cultivation using alternate wetting and drying (AWD) techniques. The company said it will launch a 100 ha pilot in 2025 and gradually expand implementation under Vietnam government's own one-mln-ha low-emissions rice programme. Green Carbon said it is targeting the generation of around 3.66 mln carbon credits by 2035 across its Vietnam AWD project portfolio, while An Giang is expected to become one of its largest project areas. It has signed cooperation agreements with authorities in 15 Vietnamese provinces since opening a local office in 2024.

New partnership -  The Carbon Removal India Alliance (CRIA), an industry body representing more than 25 CDR companies, has signed a partnership agreement with New Delhi-based advisory firm cKinetics to support the growth of India's durable CDR sector, it announced. The organisations said they will jointly develop research, stakeholder forums, and projects aimed at improving access to finance, market infrastructure, and positioning the South Asian country as a hub for high-integrity carbon removal solutions.

Increasing research and development, building out infrastructure, creating durable markets, and strengthening standards and measurement, monitoring, reporting, and verification could help tech-based carbon removals to scale in the US, according to a report from an NGO.

India's Bureau of Energy Efficiency (BEE), administrator of the country’s emerging carbon market, has launched a public consultation on draft rules governing Programmes of Activities (PoA) under the offset mechanism.

Project-based carbon credit markets are moving towards a more regulated, state-led model as voluntary standards remain unable to address weak oversight, fragmented rules, and uncertainty around credit use, a report published Wednesday said.

A California-headquartered carbon credit investment and project management firm has opened a regional office in Singapore amid its Asian expansion efforts.

Projects registered with the International Carbon Registry (ICR) will be required to include both a rating and a risk assessment – the first carbon registry to make such a move.

A Vienna-based climate tech startup has secured Austrian government support to establish what it describes as the world's first integrated laboratory dedicated to assessing the CO2 storage potential of mineral materials.

Oil and gas companies have spent over $273 million to bolster carbon credit use in California’s emissions trading scheme, as well as shape early governance of climate-related market risks at a US financial regulator, a report found.