This week, we're looking at new guidelines and insurance policies to build trust in the carbon markets, the need for additional funding to reach net zero, and climate cooperation between the United States and Kenya.

Catalyzing carbon credits: The Biden Administration is set to issue new guidelines on Tuesday on the carbon credit market – a move expected to help build trust in the $2 billion market that is projected to top $1 trillion by 2050. The guidance will outline that credits should represent real, additional, and permanent emissions reductions and should not be used by companies for hard-to-tackle Scope 3 emissions from suppliers and customers. Meanwhile, insurers are also stepping in to instill trust and reduce risk, with companies like Oka insuring credits from issuer Cloverly.

Achieving net zero will cost a lot more: A new report from BloombergNEF estimated that to reach net zero, governments and companies will need to spend $215 trillion on the clean energy transition by 2050 – $34 trillion more than the current base case scenario. This 19% increase will be needed to scale sectors including electric vehicles, renewable energy, power grids, and carbon capture, which will all need additional support to scale. An earlier report from BNEF found investments in energy transitions increased 17% in 2023 to $1.8 trillion.

The Lone Star State sees a solar boom: In March, for the first time, Texas generated more electricity from solar power than coal and hit a nationwide record of 19.1 gigawatts of energy generation from solar farms. Texas surpassed California with its recent solar boom, having only 2GW of large solar plants in 2019 compared to California’s 13GW. It has added more solar power capacity per capita in a single year than any country in the world. 

Supporting climate innovation in Kenya: During a state visit to the United States, Kenyan President William Ruto and U.S. President Joe Biden outlined both countries’ shared commitments to climate action. President Ruto has been hailed for his climate leadership, and the country recently marked a national holiday for planting trees in response to widespread floods. The two administrations outlined commitments to scaling clean energy infrastructure, supply chains, and industrialization. The two countries will seek to scale financial investments from international institutions, multilateral development banks, and other sources, including a portion of the $568 million the United States provided to the Clean Technology Fund in 2023. The Biden Administration also announced a series of other efforts to support green growth in Kenya, including investments in hydropower, women's entrepreneurship in the energy sector, plastic recycling, weather forecasting, carbon market development, carbon capture, cooperation on nuclear power, and community-led conservation. 

Farmers embrace solar panels for free: Leveraging a combination of tax credits and agricultural grants, farmers are finding low-to-no-cost pathways for installing solar panel systems. In addition to energy cost savings, they can potentially make extra revenue by selling excess power to local utility companies, and some are leveraging crowdfunding platforms like Climatize to cover upfront costs.

Half of the world’s mangroves at risk: A new report from the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) found that sea level rise threatens half of the world's mangrove ecosystems. These ocean forests store 4-10x as much carbon as land-based trees, provide up to $65 billion in storm mitigation annually, and serve as bouy biodiversity as a nursery for juvenile marine life. The world currently loses 1-2% of mangroves each year, and as mangroves die off, they go from carbon sink to carbon source.

The link has been copied!