EU must urgently strengthen climate action: MEPs
Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) have adopted — in an overwhelming majority vote — a resolution to step up the EU's work to tackle climate change.
The resolution, adopted by MEPs on 15 September, is not legally binding but it could indicate future voting direction. There were 469 votes in favour, just 34 against and 44 abstentions.
"Extreme weather conditions are a sign of the need for more ambitious action on climate change mitigation and adaptation… the EU should play a leading role in this process and reinforce its efforts in all sectors," the bloc's parliament said.
MEPs called for the EU to scale up efforts on climate mitigation, to limit global warming to a 1.5°C rise, as well as focus on adaptation. The European Commission should propose a "comprehensive, ambitious and legally binding European climate adaptation framework, with particular emphasis on the EU's most vulnerable regions," MEPs said. The bloc should also focus on its global role, ensuring international climate finance targets are met, they added.
The commission should run an EU-wide climate risk assessment and run a climate resilience "stress test" by summer next year, MEPs said. They focussed on forest fires and droughts, calling for a "permanent EU civil protection force", as well as for an expansion of the voluntary firefighting reserve.
MEPs recommended that member states form "buffer stocks of strategic feed and foodstuffs" and that they introduce irrigation systems that recycle wastewater or use rainwater storage, in a bid to reduce overall water use. And there should be an EU-wide target of land degradation neutrality by 2030, they said.
Parliament declared a climate emergency in November 2019. The EU has committed to reduce emissions by at least 55pc by 2030, from a 1990 baseline, and is working on the so-called 'Fit for 55' package to ensure it reaches this goal.
Votes in parliament this week on the revision of the bloc's Renewable Energy Directive coincided with an emergency package, presented as the EU seeks to rapidly move away from Russian fossil fuel imports.
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Brazil’s carbon market will not start before 2030
Brazil’s carbon market will not start before 2030
New York, 24 September (Argus) — Brazil's carbon trading market will not be fully implemented in this decade, according to think tank Centro Brasil no Clima. The creation of the carbon market is a long process that starts with passing a law to create a carbon market. But environmental groups and others have criticized Brazil's carbon market bill that the lower house approved at the end of last year as too complex. The senate has yet to set a timeline to debate the lower house's proposal but is expected to make significant changes to the bill, meaning that it will need to return to the lower legislature for a final round of voting. Still, there is a growing expectation in the public and private sectors that the bill will pass ahead of the UN's Cop 29 climate conference later this year. The think tank estimates that the implementation phase of the carbon market would take around 5-6 years under the current draft bill. The preparation and legal framework for the creation of the market may take from 1-2 years. Pilot testing and initial rollout of the carbon market would take around a year. The submission of monitoring plans and emissions reporting would also be completed within 1-2 years after the pilot testing. But there is no clarity on a deadline for the phase that involves testing of the market with a full allocation of carbon credits, said William Wills, technical director at the think tank. Only 25pc of the emissions produced in Brazil will be cover in the carbon market, he said. This includes emissions from energy, waste and industries, but the agriculture sector, which accounted for 27pc of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions produced in the country in 2022, will be excluded. Brazil's largest source of GHG emissions comes from land use change and forestry, accounting for 48pc of emissions in the same period. By Jacqueline Echevarria Send comments and request more information at feedback@argusmedia.com Copyright © 2024. Argus Media group . All rights reserved.
US-led offset idea earns more corporate support
US-led offset idea earns more corporate support
New York, 24 September (Argus) — More companies registered support today for a US-backed carbon offsetting initiative that is hoping to steer funds toward the decarbonization of developing countries' power sectors. The Energy Transition Accelerator (ETA) — a project of the US State Department and two philanthropies, the Bezos Earth Fund and the Rockefeller Foundation — said that 19 companies support the general idea of the initiative, that "high-integrity carbon credits" can support "an accelerated and just clean energy transition." As part of an announcement tied to Climate Week NYC, 14 companies, including some that had previously not registered interest, signed onto a letter saying they were committed to working with the ETA as the initiative advances. The letter notes, however, that the companies are not pledging any "obligation of funding" for the initiative, which has an unclear timeline for getting projects up-and-running. The ETA previously set plans for formally launch this past April but instead said then that it would spend this year "building" on a framework for projects released last year . The ETA is hoping to create a "jurisdictional-scale" carbon crediting standard, steering funds toward efforts such as accelerating the retirement of coal-fired power plants, building new renewable generation, and improving the electric grid in developing countries. The idea is that buyers would be able to finance offset projects with more tangible climate benefits, hopefully avoiding the reputational risks associated with much of the voluntary carbon market. Prices for some major nature-based carbon offsets have fallen over the past year, as concerns about their integrity have deterred prospective buyers . The initiative's goals for this year are working to build "a community of buyers and sellers," said Nat Keohane, president of the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions think tank at the Xpansiv Climate Week Summit on Monday. Chile, the Dominican Republic, and Nigeria have expressed interest in serving as ETA pilot countries, while the Philippines this year signed on as an observer country rather than as a direct participant. Ahead of the UN's Cop 29 climate summit this year in Azerbaijan, the ETA wants to demonstrate the progress interested countries have been able to make and to collaborate with the World Bank on economic analysis and modeling to understand what future projects and investment plans might look like, Keohane said. Winrock International, which runs the American Carbon Registry, was tasked by the ETA last year with developing a standard and methodology for crediting emissions reductions. Keohane expects that to be out "next year," he said at the event. Winrock did not immediately respond to requests for comment for more clarity on its timeline. "There are also some other crediting standards coming out, and ETA will be evaluating those against the criteria that we put out in our framework last year," Keohane said. By Cole Martin Send comments and request more information at feedback@argusmedia.com Copyright © 2024. Argus Media group . All rights reserved.
Carbon ‘market structure’ next phase: ICVCM
Carbon ‘market structure’ next phase: ICVCM
New York, 24 September (Argus) — The Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market (ICVCM) is broadening its focus and plans to offer guidance around improving "market structure," the chair of the private sector initiative said this week. The group is "going to turn to market structure issues," bringing key players from the still relatively small voluntary carbon market together to examine what would be needed to supporter a larger, more liquid market, ICVCM chair Annette Nazareth said at the Xpansiv Climate Week Summit, a Climate Week NYC side event. The council currently assesses carbon offset project types and carbon crediting programs, which has allowed for the sale this year of credits labeled as meeting the group's "core carbon principles" for project quality. The group has sought to standardize the largely unregulated market, potentially boosting trust among prospective corporate buyers that are worried about the reputational and legal risks of funding offset projects that might reduce emissions less than they claim. ICVCM said Nazareth was referring to previously announced "continuous improvement work programs," which involve studying issues that could feature in the next edition of the group's core carbon principles rulebook that is due for implementation in 2-3 years. Some of these study groups are underway, including ones on how to align projects with national climate commitments and strengthen requirements around the permanence of emissions reductions, while others are set to start later this year. Some topics Nazareth mentioned could make the market — which is largely an over-the-counter one today — less opaque for prospective buyers. She said there was interest in looking at encouraging price transparency and trade reporting, better integration of data, and addressing the fragmentation of carbon registries to allow for more "interoperability" and potentially encouraging a "meta-registry." Other topics on the ICVCM's agenda involve equity concerns, such as setting best practices around disclosing and sharing revenues with local communities and also making it easier for small developers to access funds for starting up projects. "Do we need to create databases on the performance of project developers? Would it help to have some sort of platform where lenders and project developers can find each other? There's a lot of interesting things that we could look at," Nazareth said. Proponents of more guidance, which has come over the last year from various private groups and from regulators like the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission, hope that clearer standards will assuage doubts about the market and scale up investments in climate change mitigation projects. But there is still deep disagreement about the ultimate role of carbon offsets, which some environmental groups fear is deterring companies from reducing emissions within their own operations. The Science Based Targets Initiative, a private sector group that assesses corporate climate goals, said earlier this year that companies can meet its standards even if they use carbon credits to offset emissions from their supply chain, but the group later backtracked and said it was still debating the issue. By Cole Martin Send comments and request more information at feedback@argusmedia.com Copyright © 2024. Argus Media group . All rights reserved.
Trillions could be diverted to climate finance: Report
Trillions could be diverted to climate finance: Report
London, 24 September (Argus) — Developed countries could mobilise more than $5 trillion/yr to address climate change, including by ending fossil fuel subsidies and levying a range of taxes, civil society organisation Oil Change International said today. Countries classed as ‘Annex II' by UN climate body the UNFCCC — which number 24, plus the EU — could raise $5.3 trillion/yr by taking measures such as imposing a "frequent flyer levy", as well as "climate damage taxes" on fossil fuel producers and tackling tax evasion, Oil Change International said. Almost 200 countries agreed at last year's UN Cop 28 climate summit to transition away from fossil fuels . The next "key step" is for a new climate finance goal "to make this possible", Oil Change said. Countries at Cop 29 in November will decide on the next stage of the climate finance goal, known as the new collective quantified goal (NCQG). The initial goal, agreed in 2009, saw developed countries pledging to provide $100bn/yr in climate finance to developing nations over 2020-25. Developing countries have broadly called for a floor of $1 trillion/yr for the next iteration of the goal, while developed countries have not yet put forward their thoughts on amounts. Disagreement persists over UNFCCC country classifications of developed and developing, which date back to the organisation's setting up in 1992. Ending fossil fuel subsidies — to which several developed countries have already committed — could raise $270bn, Oil Change's report found. The single action that could mobilise the most finance, at $2.56 trillion annually, would be a wealth tax "on multi-millionaires and billionaires", the report found. Brazil, which holds the presidency of the G20 this year and will host Cop 30 next year, has also proposed a tax on billionaires. Send comments and request more information at feedback@argusmedia.com Copyright © 2024. Argus Media group . All rights reserved.
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