China’s emissions have risen sharply in recent years due to rapid industrialisation, fuelled chiefly by coal burning. In terms of national emissions, it has overtaken the US; its per-capita emissions are currently much lower, but rising quickly. The European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC) has recently put China’s annual emissions at 6.8 tonnes of carbon [...]

In advance of COP 17, the Green Climate Fund’s (GCF) Transitional Committee (TC) have passed the Parties a report, recommending it “take note” of the report’s findings. It is worth analysing this report since it  brings in to clearer focus the contrast between the expectations that some have for the fund – largely the private sector [...]

Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) credits have been receiving plenty of bad press, with the latest being reports of human rights abuses committed in Honduras over the ownership of credit-producing land. This is particularly serious as the CDM has been set up to feed into the EU ETS, which means that CDM credits find their way [...]

It has taken a long time in China, but official policies finally aim to achieve a sustainable balance between environmental protection and economic growth in significant ways. Developments over the last several weeks and months include a draft proposal for new rules on fines for pollution, discussions of an environmental tax and increased environmental spending, [...]

Last month, the second edition of State of the Forest Carbon Markets,was released. All in all, the report painted a positive picture for the forest carbon markets: the volumes, transaction value and average prices in 2010 were all up on the previous year at, respectively, 30.1MtCO2e, $178 million and $5.50/tCO2e. Notably, REDD based transactions dominated the total [...]

In anticipation of the centralised European registry for the EU ETS the Commission has turned its attention to the legal issues surrounding the traceability of stolen emissions allowances. The approach taken is deferential to the national laws of individual Member States rather than providing a harmonised EU-wide rule. However, the Commission’s proposals have done little [...]

On the 29th September the government submitted its official report to the European Commission on levels of air pollution in the UK for 2010. It makes for pretty grim reading. The report confirms that 40 of the 43 air quality zones in the UK breached the annual limits for nitrogen dioxide. No other EU country has a higher proportion of non-compliant zones. [...]

The EU ETS remains high on the UK Parliament agenda following a recent submission by Barclays Capital calling for an independent and separate regulator for the regime. The submission provides a much needed focus on some of the key peculiarities of the EU ETS which have been known to cause tension in the emissions market. [...]

Indonesia’s flagship Rimba Raya REDD project was registered this year under one of the Voluntary Carbon Standard’s REDD methodologies, aiming to preserve “91,215 hectares of tropical peat swamp forest,” equivalent to an emissions reduction of 104,886,254 tonnes of CO2e over the crediting period of 30 years, according to the registration documents. The project has long been an [...]

As part of the latest budget the UK government announced its intention to introduce a price floor for the emissions market. It is hoped that this move will encourage low carbon investment by disincentivising regulated entities from emitting at current levels. How this proposed unilateral measure will interact with the EU ETS remains to be [...]