Aurelia Butler

Companies that create and sell carbon credits are considering options from public listings to the business model used by the precious metals industry to attract investment to the market.Credits, each of which are supposed to represent a tonne of carbon avoided or removed from the atmosphere and are generated by environmental projects such as tree planting, can be bought by companies to offset emissions.In early December, London-listed investment group Foresight Sustainable Forestry Company, which is developing carbon credit projects, became the first to receive the London Stock Exchange’s new “voluntary carbon market” label — in reference to offsets bought voluntarily rather than to meet legal emissions targets.Funds and companies can list in London using this designation, raising money to fund carbon removal projects, and providing investors with carbon credits or cash dividends derived from the sale of credits. The LSE is in talks with various groups about listing in London using its new label. As well as trading and using carbon credits, some investors want more long-term involvement in the market, while carbon credit project developers are turning to capital markets to help finance new offsetting schemes.The business model used by parts of the mining industry is attractive for specialist investors that want to gain long-term exposure to carbon credits without having to directly manage projects, which are governed by complicated rules and are often located in remote places. Under the model, companies provide upfront funding for projects in return for the right to purchase precious metals, or carbon credits, in future at a favourable price. Jo Anderson, director of credit project developer Carbon Tanzania, said many new entrants to the carbon market were looking to secure a long-term supply of credits that could be used as “an asset base for a stock market IPO”.The market for voluntary carbon credits is still small — it was worth $2bn in 2021 — but is starting to attract large financial institutions. In September, insurance broker Marsh announced that US clients could pay some fees with carbon credits, transferring them to Bank of America, which then pays the cash value of the credits to Marsh. Stewart MacDonald, co-founder of investment manager Natural Carbon Capital, said he was aiming to raise £150mn or more for a London-listed fund that would provide upfront capital to carbon credits projects in return for a pre-agreed share of the offsets that it would then sell. MacDonald said he expected that by 2030 the fund would have received more than 20mn credits, and hoped it would “expand to a $1bn-plus fund”. Interest in investing directly in projects that generate carbon credits has grown alongside concerns about supply. “There is a widely forecast shortage in the supply of voluntary carbon credits as soon as 2028,” said Richard Kelly, a managing director of Foresight Group, an investment fund that manages Foresight Sustainable Forestry Company.Numerous carbon credit groups have outlined plans that would significantly increase the pipeline of credits. Canada-listed Carbon Streaming — which provides cash for projects in exchange for the right to sell the credits and take a cut of the revenues — said it was in talks with developers about investments worth up to $1bn in about 100 projects over several years. The company said it expected to be receiving 20mn credits a year by the end of this decade. An average of almost 150mn credits a year were generated by all projects globally between 2016 and 2021, according to the Berkeley Carbon Trading Project, which tracks the market.Businesses looking to increase the long-term pipeline include Green 14, a joint venture between investment banking group Bacchus Capital and conservation organisation Space for Giants. The group said it was hoping to raise hundreds of millions of dollars to fund the development and operation of 20 or more projects in Africa. “We estimate we’ve got about 100mn tonnes of credits we can bring to the market over the next 25 years,” said Max Graham, chief executive of Space for Giants.

However, the market remains lightly regulated and fragmented. Credit rating agency BeZero warned of the risk that carbon credit projects may underdeliver: it found that 20 per cent of 208 projects it tracked had issued less than half of the credits the developers had forecast issuing in total. The median issuance was 80 per cent of the forecast credits.Organisations, such as Verra, that provide carbon offset accreditation are also inundated with applications. That has created a backlog and delayed the approval of new projects and the issuance of credits, according to Verra. Meanwhile, efforts to secure land to develop carbon credit projects have created tensions in some places, including the Brazilian Amazon. MacDonald said plans to list a fund this year had been thrown off track by the economic downturn, and the group was now waiting for IPO conditions to improve. The team was in talks with a potential “cornerstone investor” that had experience in commodity trading, he added. If capital markets have been less volatile this year, said Justin Cochrane, chief executive of Carbon Streaming, “I think you would have seen much bigger entry into market [by financial institutions] . . . As you look out the next three to five years there’s going to be a material shift: more capital [coming] into this [industry].”

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(Reuters) – Road and utility crews faced the task on Monday of digging out and restoring some normalcy around Buffalo, New York, where a blizzard considered the area’s worst in 45 years buried snow plows, stranded motorists in cars and killed at least 13 people.The lethal blizzard took form late on Friday and pummeled western New York through the Christmas holiday weekend, capping an Arctic freeze and winter storm front that had extended over most of the United States for days, as far south as the Mexican border.At least 30 people have died in U.S. weather-related incidents since late last week, according to an NBC News tally, while CNN put the total number of fatalities at 26.The greater Buffalo region, lying at the edge of Lake Erie near the Canadian border was one of the hardest-hit places.Numbing cold combined with howling winds and heavy “lake-effect” snow – the result of moisture picked up by frigid air moving over warmer lake waters – produced a storm that Governor Kathy Hochul said would go down in history as “the Blizzard of ’22.”The storm’s official death toll in Buffalo and elsewhere in Erie County climbed to 13 on Sunday, and was expected to rise as more bodies found in snow drifts or buried vehicles were examined and confirmed as weather-related fatalities, authorities said.The governor called it an “epic, once-in-a-lifetime” weather disaster that ranked as the fiercest winter storm to hit Buffalo, New York state’s second-largest city, since a crippling 1977 blizzard that killed nearly 30 people.The latest blizzard, which initially overwhelmed emergency crews, came nearly six weeks after a record-setting but shorter-lived lake-effect storm struck western New York.RESCUING THE RESCUERSDespite a ban on road travel imposed since Friday, hundreds of Erie County motorists were stranded in their vehicles over the weekend, with National Guard troops mobilized to help with rescues hindered by blinding white-out conditions.Authorities were expected to decide Monday morning whether to extend the ban.County Chief Executive Mark Poloncarz told reporters that snow drifts as high as 8 feet on roadways were too thick and heavy to clear with conventional snow-removal equipment.Many snow plows, tow trucks, ambulances and other emergency vehicles dispatched on Saturday and Sunday became stuck in the snow, “and we had to send rescue missions to rescue the rescuers,” he said.The Buffalo police department posted an online plea to the public for assistance, asking those who “have a snow mobile and are willing to help” to call a hotline for instructions.Although power had been restored to most Erie County utility customers, as of Sunday evening about 15,000 homes remained without electricity, according to Poloncarz.He said one electrical substation knocked offline was sealed off by an 18-foot-tall mound of snow, and utility crews found the entire facility frozen inside.At the request of state officials, Hochul said, local power companies had pre-positioned some 7,000 utility workers ahead of the storm on Friday, but blinding, drifting snow had made it difficult for crews to reach stricken equipment.Efforts to clear snow-clogged roads were likewise stymied.”It is not a matter of resources – bodies and equipment – it is a matter of mobility and access,” Hochul said.Hochul told reporters on Sunday that the Biden administration had agreed to support her request for a federal disaster declaration and she expected formal approval shortly. While the official blizzard warning for the greater Buffalo region was lifted on Sunday, officials warned that blizzard-like conditions persisted in some areas, and that more snow was in the forecast through Tuesday. More

SAMR launched an antitrust investigation into the Chinese academic database in May.($1 = 6.9601 Chinese yuan renminbi) More

NAIROBI (Reuters) – Over recent months, sets of sturdy, brightly-branded battery swapping stations have cropped up around Kenya’s capital Nairobi, allowing electric motorcyclists to exchange their low battery for a fully-charged one.It is a sign of an electric motorcyle revolution starting to unfold in Kenya where combustion-engine motorbikes are a cheaper and quicker way to get around than cars but environmental experts say are 10 times more polluting.East Africa’s biggest economy is betting on electric-powered motorcycles, its renewables-heavy power supply and position as a technology and start-up hub to lead the region’s shift to zero-emission electric mobility.The battery swapping system not only saves time – essential for Kenya’s more than one million motorcyclists, most of whom use the bikes commercially – but also saves buyers money as many sellers follow a model in which they retain ownership of the battery, the bike’s most expensive part.”It doesn’t make a lot of economic and business sense for them to acquire a battery…which would almost double the cost of the bike,” said Steve Juma, the co-founder of electric bike company Ecobodaa.Ecobodaa has 50 test electric motorcyles on the road now and plans to have 1,000 by the end of 2023 which it sells for about $1,500 each – roughly the same price as combustion-engine bikes thanks to the exclusion of the battery from the cost.After the initial purchase, the electric motorcyle – designed to be sturdy enough to traverse rocky roads – is cheaper to run than petrol-guzzling ones.”With the normal bike, I will use fuel worth approximately 700-800 Kenyan shillings ($5.70-$6.51) each day, but with this bike, when I swap a battery I get one battery at 300 shillings,” said Kevin Macharia, 28, who transports goods and passengers around Nairobi.EXPANSION PLANSEcobodaa is just one of several Nairobi-based electric motorcycle startups working to prove themselves in Kenya before eventually expanding in East Africa. Kenya’s consistent power supply which is about 95% renewable led by hydroelectricity and has a widespread network, was a major support for growth of the sector, said Jo Hurst-Croft, founder of ARC Ride, another Nairobi-based electric motorcycle startup. The country’s power utility estimates it generates enough to charge two million electric motorcycles a day: electricity access in the country is over 75%, according to the World Bank, and even higher in Nairobi.Uganda and Tanzania also have robust and renewables-heavy grids that could support electric mobility, said Hurst-Croft.”We’re putting over 200 swapping stations in Nairobi and expanding to Dar es Salaam and Kampala,” said Hurst-Croft. ($1 = 122.9000 Kenyan shillings) More

TOKYO (Reuters) -Bank of Japan (BOJ) Governor Haruhiko Kuroda on Monday brushed aside the chance of a near-term exit from ultra-loose monetary policy, although markets and policymakers are signalling an increasing focus on what comes after Kuroda’s tenure ends.Investors have continued to push up Japanese government bond (JGB) yields on expectations the BOJ will phase out its yield control under a new governor when Kuroda’s second five-year term comes to a close in April of next year.The shift in attention towards a post-Kuroda era was also evident in comments by Prime Minister Fumio Kishida on Monday that a decision on whether to revise Japan’s decade-old blueprint for beating deflation will be made after a new BOJ governor is appointed.”It’s something for after the new BOJ governor is decided,” Kishida said in a seminar, referring to possible changes the government might seek to its joint statement with the BOJ that commits the central bank to hitting a 2% inflation target at the earliest date possible.The BOJ shocked markets last week with a surprise widening of the allowance band around its 10-year JGB target, a move that aimed at easing some of the cost of prolonged stimulus.Kuroda said on Monday that last week’s decision was intended to enhance the effect of its ultra-easy policy, rather than a first step towards withdrawing its massive stimulus programme.”This is definitely not a step toward an exit. The Bank will aim to achieve the price target in a sustainable and stable manner, accompanied by wage increases, by continuing with monetary easing under yield curve control,” Kuroda said in a speech delivered to the business lobby Keidanren.But Kuroda said wage growth will likely increase gradually due to intensifying labour shortages and structural changes in Japan’s job market, which are leading to higher pay for temporary workers and a rise in the number of permanent workers.”Labour market conditions in Japan are projected to tighten further, and firms’ price- and wage-setting behaviour is also likely to change,” Kuroda said.”In this sense, Japan is approaching a critical juncture in breaking out of a prolonged period of low inflation and low growth,” he said.The strength of wage growth is seen as key to how soon the BOJ could raise its yield curve control (YCC) targets, which are set at -0.1% for short-term interest rates and around 0% for the 10-year bond yield.The BOJ’s relentless bond buying to defend the yield cap has drawn increased public criticism for distorting market pricing and causing an unwelcome yen fall that pushed up the cost of importing already expensive raw materials.Sources have told Reuters that Kishida’s administration will consider revising next year the joint statement that focuses on steps to beat deflation – a goal that has become out of sync with recent rises in inflation, and has prevented the BOJ from adjusting monetary policy more flexibly.Analysts say any such revision would heighten the chance of a tweak to the BOJ’s ultra-low interest rates.The two-year JGB yield briefly rose to 0.225% on Monday, the highest since 2015, on expectations of a near-term rate hike. The 10-year JGB yield also edged up to 0.445%, near the new band’s 0.5% upper limit.Kishida offered few clues on his choice as the next BOJ governor, saying only that the new appointee would be someone “deemed most appropriate” at the time. More