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TOP STORY
Ontario leader broke law in cancelling carbon market, court finds
Ontario Premier Doug Ford violated environmental law when he abruptly cancelled the Canadian jurisdiction’s WCI-linked ETS last summer, a provincial court said in a split ruling on Friday that will not have a material impact on the province’s current climate policy.
EMEA
EU nations scrambling to halt rising illegal trade in super-pollutants
The EU is battling to curb surging illegal imports in potent Chinese-made F-gases, with smugglers set to bring in products this year with more global warming impact than an entire mid-sized member state.
EU Market: EUAs rise by 5% as Brexit, oil developments trigger short-covering
European carbon prices gapped higher on Friday, hitting a seven-day high near €24.50 as oil jumped on news of an Iranian tanker being attacked near Saudi Arabia and as optimism grew over a potential Brexit deal – both of which are said to have triggered EUA short-covering by speculators.
INTERNATIONAL
CDM hits dual milestones ahead of UN carbon offset scheme’s potential conclusion
The UN’s Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) passed two noteworthy milestones this month, as countries prepare to determine whether to wind up the project-based carbon finance programme.
AMERICAS
California forestry offset protocol revisions may get bumped to 2020, sources say
California regulator ARB may not begin the process of updating its WCI forestry protocol until next year as it completes work on various regulatory priorities in the final quarter of 2019, several sources told Carbon Pulse.
ASIA PACIFIC
CN Markets: Pilot market data for week ending Oct. 11, 2019
Closing prices, ranges and volumes for China’s regional pilot carbon markets this week.
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LAST TICKETS REMAIN!
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BITE-SIZED UPDATES FROM AROUND THE WORLD
**Sponsored by the Alliance for Environmental Markets and Investments (AEMI) and Ecosystem Marketplace publisher Forest Trends, the Environmental Markets and Finance Summit in Washington DC on Oct. 29-31 will be taking stock of the state of environmental markets and asking how to scale up what works and (maybe) abandon what doesn’t. If you’ll be in DC then, be sure to register for the summit here.**
Brussels backlog – A draft law for an EU 2050 net zero emissions target may not come before March 2020, at least a month later than planned, as Ursula von der Leyen’s incoming European Commission took a battering this week. The European Parliament has rejected three of her planned 26 Commissioner posts – those of France, Hungary and Romania – meaning the Commission’s original Nov. 1 start date will be delayed for at least a month while replacements are found and scrutinised, Politico reports. That sets back the deadline for a climate law pledged to come within the Commission’s first 100 days. Von der Leyen’s intended climate boss Frans Timmermans sailed through his preliminary parliamentary hearing this week, read Carbon Pulse’s take on his vision for a ‘European Green Deal’.
The good, the bad, and the lobbyists – German car manufacturers Daimler and BMW, utility RWE, and building materials company HeidelbergCement are among the world’s most influential lobbyists against climate policy, according to a study by the non-profit research group InfluenceMap. the analysis combines metrics representing companies’ economic and political clout, level of engagement, and corporate climate positions over the last four years. On the positive end of the scale, German utilities E.ON and EnBW, along with telecommunications company Deutsche Telekom, were found to support climate policy in line with the Paris Agreement. The study was based on over 100,000 pieces of evidence on 250 companies and 75 trade associations, such as comments on policy and regulatory consultations, showing that even corporations with “strong climate goals for their own companies” undermined these through lobbying activities. (Clean Energy Wire)
Ben & Jerry would be proud – Burlington, Vermont will become one of the first cities in the US to apply an internal carbon price when evaluating future decisions about investment in the city’s fleet and building heating systems, the city’s Mayor Miro Weinberger has announced. He also proposed a statewide carbon pollution fee that analysis shows would cut emissions by 37% by 2040 when combined with existing clean energy policies, create new jobs, and boost state economic growth. (Vermont Biz)
More like San Francis-No – Embattled California utility Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) rejected San Francisco’s offer to buy the bankrupt company’s power lines located within the city for $2.5 bln. In a press release, the company said San Francisco’s offer was significantly below fair-market value and would unfairly pass a large amount of the costs on to PG&E customers. Additionally, it said the city’s offer significantly underestimated the substantial separation and impairment cost San Francisco would have to bear as part of the transaction. (The San Francisco Chronicle)
There’s no replacement for CO2 displacement – Bentley says its facility in Crewe has become the UK’s first carbon-neutral luxury car factory. The site sources 100% of its electricity from onsite solar panels and other renewable sources such as green-certified power. As the brand moves towards electrification of its vehicles, it has pledged to sell a hybrid version of each of its cars by 2023 and a pure battery-electric vehicle by 2025. Bentley claims all emissions that cannot be eliminated are compensated with carbon offsets. (Energy Live News)
And finally… Darkest green – Chinese oil refiner Jiangsu Eastern Shenghong has issued a $140-mln ‘green’ bond to fund the construction of an oil refinery capable of processing 16 mln tonnes of crude oil annually, Reuters reports. Willing investors can get a 6% annual interest rate on what is the largest green bond issued by a privately owned company in China so far. The ‘green’ tag is justified by claims that the new plant will be more energy efficient than similar facilities in China. International observers have previously criticised China for allowing fossil fuel projects qualify under its green bond regulations.
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