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TOP STORY
Goldman Sachs slashes EU carbon price forecast on mounting bearish factors including COVID-19
Analysts at Goldman Sachs have more than halved their forecast for EU carbon prices to €15 in 2021 in light of mounting bearish pressures including the coronavirus crisis, and have said further reforms to the ETS are urgently needed.
EMEA
Updated EU data confirms 2019 saw largest drop in ETS emissions in a decade
Emissions in the EU ETS dropped by over 8% in 2019, according to nearly complete compliance data published by the European Commission Wednesday, confirming analyst estimates that last year saw the largest fall since the start of the global financial crisis.
Proposed new Irish coalition govt to push ahead with carbon tax increases
Ireland’s potential new government is pushing ahead with plans to raise the country’s carbon tax, calling climate change a more pressing crisis than the coronavirus.
Adding cement, power imports to EU ETS most likely start to border CO2 measures -think-tank
The EU will probably seek to add cement and power imports into its ETS as a border carbon adjustment before expanding to other sectors, a think-tank said on Wednesday.
EU Market: EUAs continue slide below €20 as markets weaken
EUAs briefly slipped under €19 on Wednesday, again reacting to oil price jolts and eventually closing another 2.8% down to undo more of the recent rally as wider markets fell on coronavirus impacts.
ASIA PACIFIC
New Zealand sees slight dip in GHG emissions in 2018
New Zealand’s greenhouse gas output fell slightly in 2018, official data showed Wednesday, less of a decline than the government wants as emissions from agriculture continued to rise.
Refining NZ to join ETS, announces strategic review
New Zealand’s only oil refinery will be brought into the nation’s emissions trading scheme after its exemption agreement with the government expires at the end of 2022, the company said, while announcing a strategic review of its role in the domestic fuel market.
Vegetation projects monopolise credits in Australia’s latest offset issuance
Australia’s Clean Energy Regulator has issued almost 240,000 new carbon credits in its latest round of awards, with all of them going to vegetation-based projects in Queensland and New South Wales.
AMERICAS
Ontario, oil and gas sector lead Canadian emissions 2% higher in 2018
Higher Canadian emissions in 2018 continued to take the country further away from its Paris Agreement target, as GHG growth in the oil and gas sector persisted and Ontario bucked its previous abatement progress, according to government data published on Wednesday.
US power companies, associations request carbon pricing conference from FERC
A coalition of fossil-based and renewable electricity generators and trade groups petitioned the US Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) on Tuesday to host a technical conference on carbon pricing, as more regional grid operators debate the inclusion of a CO2 adder in wholesale power markets.
PODCAST
CARBON PULSE CONVERSATIONS 002: ClearBlue Markets
In the second episode of our new coronavirus-era podcast, Carbon Pulse speaks with Toronto-based analysts and consultants ClearBlue Markets about the pandemic’s effects on the WCI cap-and-trade programme and Canadian carbon pricing systems.
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BITE-SIZED UPDATES FROM AROUND THE WORLD
Net effect – The world would gain $336-422 trillion by 2100 if action was taken to limit warming to the Paris agreement targets of 2C and 1.5C, while failure to achieve the goals could mean countries will lose $126-616 trillion or 0.57% in GDP a year, according to an international team of climate experts writing in the journal Nature Communications. The findings show that meeting the Paris goals gives greater benefits for developing countries with high emissions, such as India, Indonesia, Nigeria, and China, than for developed countries such as the US and the EU in the medium term, though all benefit in the longer term. (The Guardian)
Stop it – Mizuho, one of the world’s biggest funders of coal-fired power plants, will put an end to all financing of new projects and end all existing loan to coal by mid-century, Reuters reports. It currently has an outstanding balance of $2.8 billion to coal-related loans, which it said will be reduced by 50% by 2030. Japanese lenders have been one of the world’s biggest sources of fresh funding for coal after the Paris Agreement was signed in 2015.
Evergreen tweet plan – Climate team members from the campaigns of former US Democratic presidential candidates Elizabeth Warren and Jay Inslee on Wednesday released an 85-page roadmap for a post-coronavirus green recovery. Dubbed the “Evergreen Action Plan”, the strategy borrows widely from the climate plans of the two former candidates, while also incorporating new wrinkles. Those include establishing an Office of Climate Mobilization at the White House that’s akin to the Office of War Mobilization established during World War II, as well as a National Climate Council modelled after the modern-day National Security Council. (Earther)
Computing for trees – US software giant Microsoft has vowed to build a new ‘planetary computer’ and protect more land than it uses by 2025 as part of a suite of sustainability initiatives unveiled that builds on the tech giant’s high profile plan to be carbon negative within the next 10 years. The new pledges, outlined by Microsoft president Brad Smith in a blog post published Wednesday, are geared towards protecting biodiversity and leveraging data, algorithms, and computing power to boost the health of global ecosystems. (BusinessGreen)
All about the OAL – California regulator ARB sent its 2019 Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS) rulemaking package to the Office of Administrative Law (OAL) for final approval on Tuesday. The amendments would implement an LCFS price cap in line with the programme’s annual Credit Clearance Market (CCM) maximum price, which for this year is $217.97. Other changes include extending the operation of the CCM by one month, making several modifications to the Clean Fuel Reward programme, and installing an advance credit mechanism. The OAL has until May 27 to make a determination, and the ARB has targeted July 1 as the effective start date.
And finally… A decade under the influence – Additionally, California’s Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS) celebrated its 10-year anniversary on Wednesday, according to trade group Low Carbon Fuels Coalition. Over the past decade, the complementary transportation sector programme has eliminated 50 Mt of carbon pollution as California’s GDP grew 50% faster than the rest of the US, the coalition said.
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