Search Climate Insights Directory

COP30 achieved agreements to triple adaptation finance and launch the Tropical Forest Forever Facility, but failed to formally establish roadmaps for transitioning away from fossil fuels and halting deforestation due to lobbying from petrostates. The summit saw record participation from Indigenous Peoples and significant commitments from 14,000 local governments to reduce emissions.

The report argues that tropical forests must be transitioned from being viewed as climate risks to central climate solutions. Based on an assessment of 91 countries, it highlights that restoring areas deforested since 2001 could capture up to 49 GtCO2. To achieve this, the authors propose the Reversing Deforestation Mechanism (RDM), a results-based financial tool designed to reward net carbon removals at the jurisdictional level. RDM is intended to complement existing frameworks like Jurisdictional REDD+ (JREDD+) and the Tropical Forest Forever Facility (TFFF). At a carbon price of US$ 50 per ton, the RDM could remove up to 2 GtCO2 annually, potentially closing 11–13% of the 2035 emissions gap and generating US$ 100 billion in annual revenues.

The document introduces the Integrated Forum on Climate Change and Trade, an institutionally independent 'laboratory' designed to foster dialogue between climate and trade experts. It aims to move beyond the diagnosis of problems to the design of technical solutions in areas such as climate criteria, carbon accounting, and the acceleration of renewable energy deployment, without producing binding legal texts.

The Corporate Climate Responsibility Monitor reveals that major companies are increasing their use of carbon removals, often relying on low-quality, non-permanent solutions without sufficient transparency. The report highlights issues of double-counting between corporations and governments and argues that carbon removals are being used as a 'licence to pollute' rather than as a supplement to essential emissions cuts.

The International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO) and the Greenhouse Gas Protocol (GHG-P) announced a partnership on 9 September 2025 to merge and align their greenhouse gas accounting frameworks. The collaboration focuses on three core areas: corporate footprints, product footprints, and project-level GHG accounting. While the authors welcome the potential for a unified global framework to reduce fragmentation and reporting burdens, they warn that harmonisation must not lead to the dilution of standards. Specifically, they argue that carbon credits must not be treated as substitutes for direct emission reductions and that scope 3 accounting must not be artificially lowered through certificate trading. The authors also emphasize that the governance of the new standards must be transparent and inclusive to prevent the overrepresentation of large corporate interests, suggesting a model that combines ISO's regulatory recognition with GHG-P's transparency and stakeholder breadth.

The report argues that methane emissions from coking coal mining are a significant but under-accounted 'blind spot' in the steel industry's climate impact. It highlights that coking coal is more methane-intensive than thermal coal and that Australian mines, which supply over half of the global seaborne coking coal market, consistently underreport these emissions. Using IEA data and GWP20 metrics, the report estimates that mining emissions can add 10% to 17% to the emission intensity of blast furnace steel, with some 'gassiest' mines potentially doubling the climate footprint. It concludes that nearly half of these emissions could be abated using existing technologies at a cost lower than the market price of Australian Carbon Credit Units.

The document examines the proliferation of trade-climate measures and the resulting risks of trade barriers and disadvantages for developing countries. It proposes a multi-level approach to cooperation at the WTO, ranging from high-level legal principles and good regulatory practices to specific design features and technical interoperability of carbon accounting.

The policy brief by Carbon Market Watch and Oeko-Institut criticizes the draft CRCF methodologies for permanent carbon removals, citing critical failures in additionality, biomass accounting, and long-term monitoring. It argues that the current framework risks certifying low-quality units that do not represent actual emission reductions, potentially undermining EU climate action.

The document analyzes ODS destruction projects, which provide high-impact carbon credits by permanently eliminating potent greenhouse gases like CFCs. While these projects are considered highly additional and have high retirement rates, they face scaling challenges due to a lack of destruction facilities in developing countries and complex transboundary regulations. Key quality risks involve the monitoring, reporting, and verification (MRV) of the chain of custody and baseline leakage assumptions, though these are generally well-mitigated by existing methodologies.

This report presents guidelines for designing Border Carbon Adjustment (BCA) mechanisms, based on global stakeholder dialogues. It offers specific recommendations on measuring embodied GHG emissions, determining sectoral coverage, managing revenues, and crediting foreign carbon prices. The guidance emphasizes 'parallel treatment' between domestic and foreign producers and suggests mechanisms to support small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and developing countries in their low-carbon transition, while cautioning against blanket country exemptions to maintain the effectiveness of leakage prevention.

The report examines the challenges and opportunities for a 'green recovery' in Ukraine following Russia's invasion, which caused direct damages of USD 176 billion. While Ukraine has established governance structures and transparency tools like the DREAM platform, it lacks a unified national reconstruction strategy, leaving sustainability efforts fragmented. The document highlights the town of Trostianets as a successful local model of sustainable rebuilding and suggests that Ukraine align its recovery with EU standards, such as the EU Taxonomy and the Recovery and Resilience Facility. It recommends the adoption of international green building and infrastructure certifications (e.g., EDGE, Envision) to ensure long-term resilience and climate neutrality.

The Corporate Responsibility Monitor 2025 finds that the tech sector faces a credibility crisis as AI growth drives exponential energy demand and emissions. The report argues that current accounting practices, which favor market-based over location-based reporting, obscure the true environmental impact of tech giants. While some companies like Google, Microsoft, and Apple show early leadership in renewable energy procurement and supply chain employment, the sector generally lacks transparency regarding third-party data centers, mineral sourcing, and device lifespans. The document calls for the GHG-Protocol and SBTi to mandate location-based reporting and for companies to adopt 24/7 renewable energy procurement targets to align with a 1.5°C pathway.

Ember's submission to the Independent Review of Greenhouse Gas Removals warns against overreliance on Power BECCS, citing significant delays at the Drax power station, technological uncertainty, and high costs to consumers. The document highlights that Drax's BECCS project has been delayed to the early 2030s despite substantial public subsidies and that the technology's carbon neutrality is scientifically contested. Ember notes a 60.1% decrease in estimated residual emissions to be balanced by engineered removals between the 6th and 7th Carbon Budgets. It further argues that Power BECCS creates a dangerous dependence on imported biomass, with over 99% of Drax's 2024 wood pellets being imported, primarily from North America. The report recommends winding down Drax subsidies after 2031 and prioritising decarbonisation of easier-to-abate sectors like power, buildings, and transport.

The Climate Bonds Initiative's guide outlines a comprehensive framework for bank transition disclosures, focusing on the decarbonisation of banking books. It establishes best practices across six key areas: commitment, baselines and targets, delivery strategy, aspects beyond emissions, governance, and reporting. The guidance emphasizes the need for banks to disclose both financed and facilitated emissions, benchmark trajectories against credible sectoral pathways, and implement specific phase-out dates for misaligned activities like unabated coal and new oil and gas exploration. It also integrates requirements for just transition principles and climate resilience, while urging alignment between transition plans and formal financial reporting to ensure credibility.

The Corporate Climate Responsibility Monitor (v5.0) establishes a framework to distinguish genuine corporate climate leadership from greenwashing. It assesses companies across four pillars: comprehensive GHG emissions disclosure (Scopes 1, 2, and 3), the alignment of emission reduction targets with 1.5°C pathways, the implementation of sector-specific transitions, and the scaling of durable carbon dioxide removals (CDR). The guidance emphasizes that net-zero claims are misleading without deep absolute reductions and argues against the use of standalone Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs) and traditional offsetting in favor of 'climate contributions' and millennial-scale durable CDR.

The Bioplastic Feedstock Alliance (BFA) outlines a framework for companies to transition from virgin fossil-based plastics to responsibly sourced biobased alternatives. The guidance emphasizes that biobased content targets should be measurable, time-bound, and integrated into existing corporate sustainability goals, such as those related to climate, nature, and social performance. It provides a five-step recommended approach: understanding materiality, identifying desired outcomes, aligning with existing goals, developing targets based on portfolio analysis, and evaluating progress. The document also highlights the importance of responsible sourcing, the role of external certifications, and the impact of emerging regulatory frameworks like the Global Treaty on Plastic Pollution and the Greenhouse Gas Protocol's Land Sector and Removals Guidance.

The report evaluates the use of bio-based materials from agricultural and forestry residues as a mechanism for carbon dioxide removal (CDR) in the building sector. Using BEAM life cycle assessment software, it estimates a cumulative global carbon removal capacity of 3.6 Gt CO2 by 2050, with an additional 16.5 Gt CO2 in avoided emissions. The analysis highlights that while non-timber biomass offers significant potential, the integration of mass timber could increase storage by fivefold. Implementation is hindered by challenges in carbon accounting, durability, and building code compliance, though emerging policies in the EU, Canada, and the US are beginning to incentivize biogenic carbon storage.

Reclaim Finance critiques PCAF's proposed expansion of avoided emissions reporting and the introduction of Expected Emission Reductions (EER), warning that these counterfactual-based metrics are subjective and prone to greenwashing. The briefing also highlights flaws in the 'financed emissions' formula, noting that it often fails to track real-world emissions due to its sensitivity to corporate value fluctuations. Reclaim Finance recommends that PCAF withdraw these proposed methodologies and instead adopt metrics that reflect actual counterparty performance and physical emissions intensities for target setting.

The report outlines the commercial and climate imperatives for heavy industries to adopt carbon dioxide removal (CDR) technologies. It identifies synergies where industrial waste, infrastructure, and expertise can accelerate the scale-up of biogenic, geochemical, and synthetic CDR. The document provides a framework for monetization through carbon credits, green premiums, and government incentives, while warning against 'mitigation deterrence'—the risk that CDR replaces essential decarbonization efforts.

The briefing distinguishes between attributional accounting, which allocates emissions responsibility, and consequential assessment, which estimates how specific corporate actions change total greenhouse gas emissions. It argues that while attributional reporting is necessary for inventories, it fails to quantify real-world abatement or value actions like grid storage. By adopting modernized consequential methods, companies can prioritize interventions—such as siting solar projects in coal-heavy regions—that drive faster grid decarbonization.