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Following recent public consultation, the New Zealand government has outlined a series of reforms to its emissions trading scheme (ETS) that will be introduced to Parliament in 2019 as amendments to the Climate Change Response Act 2002 (the legislation that established the ETS system). The measures are scheduled to enter into force in 2020 at the earliest.

These changes include an absolute cap on ETS emissions, which will include annual announcements looking forward five years. An auctioning mechanism will be introduced into the ETS to align the supply of units with New Zealand’s emission reduction targets. The cost containment reserve, operated through the auctioning mechanism, will replace the NZD25/tCO2 (US$17/tCO2) current price ceiling or fixed price option (FPO). Currently, emitters can choose to pay NZD25/tCO2 instead of buying ETS units from emissions unit holders. The new cap will include setting the number of units to be auctioned and the settings for the new cost containment reserve. This measure is expected to restrict the number of units supplied into the scheme and boost the incentive to reduce emissions. The government will also investigate the potential introduction of a price floor in the scheme.

Another significant change is the introduction of permanent forest to the scheme. The current Permanent Forestry Sink Initiative (PFSI) would be replaced with a new permanent post-1989 forestry activity, giving landowners more incentives to plant more trees. Forest planters can report the CO2 they take out of the air and claim allowances that they can sell, thus creating a trading market and an incentive to lower CO2 emissions.

The German government has approved a draft law (Gesetzentwurf zur Beschleunigung des Energieleitungsausbaus) for the modification of the Grid Expansion Acceleration Act 2011.

The Taiwanese governmental watchdog Control Yuan (CY) has outlined a report in which it points out several shortcomings in the governmental offshore wind development strategy. It claims the government has made mistakes in rolling out the domestic offshore wind policy and criticizes its approach to selecting projects in auctions,…

The Mexican National Hydrocarbon Commission (CNH) has confirmed the cancellation of the next two oil and gas onshore bid rounds (rounds 3.2 and 3.3, namely Segunda y Tercera Licitación de la Ronda Tres) scheduled for February 2019, which would have offered nine unconventional onshore blocks with wet and dry gas.

Australian state-run power generation company Snowy Hydro has approved the AUD4bn (US$2.9bn) Snowy 2.0 expansion project, which will include a 2,000 MW pumped-storage hydropower expansion of the existing Snowy Scheme in New South Wales (south-east Australia). However, the development of the facility still requires approval from the federal government.

Indonesian state-owned oil and natural gas corporation PT Pertamina and its partners Marubeni Corporation and Sojitz have reached financial close for the Jawa-1 gas-to-power project in Cilamaya, West Java (Indonesia). The agreement calls for co-financing by several banks including the Japan Bank for International Cooperation (JBIC) and the Asian Development Bank.

The Tanzanian government has signed a contract with two Egyptian companies to build the 2,096 MW (2,140 MW gross) Rufiji dam and the associated power plant in Stiegler’s Gorge, Tanzania. The contract will be implemented by a joint venture (JV) of the Arab Contractors Company and the Egyptian state-run utility Elsewedy Electric Company,…

India has postponed the commissioning of a 1.2 mb/d (around 60 Mt/year) refinery project in Ratnagiri (Maharashtra, India) by two years, which means that the facility is now set to be completed in 2024 and commissioned in 2025. The total cost of the project is estimated at US$50bn and once built,…