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COP-21 Roundup: Dec. 11 – Day 12
We are approaching the end of the Paris climate talks, as COP President Laurent Fabius has said the final text will be out Saturday. Carbon Pulse will continue to post updates from COP-21 as they happen.
EU Market: EUAs plummet to 10-week low after breaching technical support
European carbon allowances tumbled on Friday amid scarce buying interest and after breaking through a key technical level that had supported prices since mid-September.
INTERVIEW: Ian Duncan MEP talks EU ETS, bunfights and the 1.5C effect
UK centre-right MEP Ian Duncan is steering the EU ETS post-2020 reform bill through the EU Parliament’s environment committee, though he currently has a wider outlook and is attending the UN climate talks in Paris. Carbon Pulse speaks to him on the sidelines of the negotiations.
NZ Market: NZUs push 4-year high on strong buy interest
Spot NZUs ended the week at NZ$8.90 ($6), recording a twelfth consecutive week of gains and the highest price since Jan. 5, 2012, as sustained demand kept the upward momentum going.
CN Markets: Pilot market data for week ending Dec. 11, 2015
Closing prices, ranges and volumes for China’s regional pilot carbon markets this week.
Voluntary market data from CTX for Dec. 10, 2015
A table of Verified Emission Reduction (VER) prices and offered volumes, based on voluntary market data from Carbon Trade Exchange.
Bite-sized updates from around the world
The latest draft of the Paris Agreement acknowledges the need to limit warming to below 2 degrees C and the need to try to limit the increase to 1.5 C to avoid the worst climate impacts. However, these goals do not give obvious guidance to investors and policymakers, so COP-21 negotiators added a complementary, operational long-term goal to help work toward the temperature target and measure progress. The long-term goal is critical to catalysing climate actions and shift to low-carbon investment patterns, but negotiators have wrestled with its language. A new proposal surfaced for greenhouse gas emissions neutrality in the second half of the century, on the basis of equity and guided by science in the context of sustainable development and poverty eradication. The WRI explains what exactly GHG emissions neutrality means.
Concerns are mounting that two of the business community’s “big asks” for the Paris climate summit – an explicit reference to the private sector in the preamble to the text and support for co-operative mechanisms or emissions trading – could be sidelined in the final agreement, which is now expected to be delivered tomorrow morning. (Business Green, $)
While congressional Republicans in the US remain staunchly opposed to action on climate change, corporate America pretty much agrees that the change is happening, is caused at least partly by human activity, and needs to be remedied. The rift has put corporations and their lobbyists in an awkward situation as President Obama’s administration rolls out new climate regulations. (NPR)
It appears that nearly everybody wants to disassociate itself from the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a conservative lobbying group that fights climate change policies. Its latest departure? American Electric Power (AEP), one of the nation’s largest utilities. If that wasn’t bad enough for ALEC, AEP said in its announcement it will be shifting its focus to working with states to comply with the Clean Power Plan. (EcoWatch)
Virginia Islanders could be America’s first climate change refugees – A new study from the Army Corps of Engineers projects that the broader Tangier Islands in the bay – which include adjacent Goose, Uppards and Port Isobel islands along with Tangier Island itself – may be lost entirely within 100 years if sea levels continue to rise at their current rate. Tangier – the only habited offshore island in Virginia’s waters in the bay – may need to be abandoned within about 50 years, it says. (Scientific American)
And finally… A COP-21 must watch: He may not be Sean Paul, but at Friday’s penultimate press conference at COP-21 Canadian rapper Baba Brinkman performed his song “Make it hot”, which is about carbon pricing. (It begins around the 22:20 mark)
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