Climate Market Intelligence

New Zealand Legislates Away Climate Tort, Part II: International Climate Obligations and Access to Justice

This is the second of two posts examining New Zealand’s Climate Change Response (Tort Liability) Amendment Act 2026. Part I examined the legislation’s intervention in Smith v Fonterra and situated it within an emerging international backlash against corporate climate litigation. This post asks a different question: what does New Zealand’s decision to extinguish climate tort […]

In Africa, a Growing Underground Solar Boom

Households and businesses are driving a solar boom in Africa, where rooftop arrays and other small systems account for the bulk of new solar installations. But this rapid buildout, which is driving solar additions to record levels, is largely unaccounted for in official statistics, analysts say. Read more on E360 →

Glacier collapse that killed hundreds in Nepal was decades in the making, scientists say

The mountains around Nepal’s Langtang valley are warming at an exceptional rate. This warming is reshaping the region in ways that make ‘horrible incidents’ like this more likely, scientists tell Stuti Mishra

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Meet an educator-turned-climate advocate

Jonathan Klein began pushing for climate action in schools after attending a protest with his daughter.

Satellite images show scale of devastation from Nepal floods

Aerial views show debris and sediment deposited over lush mountainsides

Nepal flash floods mapped: Where deadly floods hit along Tibet border

Nepal is now monitoring two lakes upstream of the ⁠flood zone, one of which began overflowing on Friday

What triggered Nepal flash floods? And why are experts worried a second flood is ‘imminent’?

Signal detected by monitors for seismic activity actually came from the force of ‘glacial collapse and debris flow’

Bangladesh broadens green building drive as climate pressures mount

Currently, Bangladesh has 35 certified green buildings and sustainable offices in various non-manufacturing sectors, and the concept is gaining more ground.

Carbon crossroads: Chinese firms’ investments reshape Indonesia’s petrochemical ambitions

China is pouring investment into Indonesia’s petrochemical industry. But will its stricter environmental standards at home apply abroad?

El Niño triggers cascading disruption in the Pacific’s marine food web

El Niño is suppressing nutrient-rich ocean upwelling, reducing phytoplankton and disrupting the Pacific’s marine food web.

COP31 action plan introduces initiative to turn climate pledges into investable projects

In his third letter, COP31 president Murat Kurum unveils the Climate Implementation Bridge (BRIDGE), an initiative to help countries translate national climate plans into concrete, investment-ready projects.

Nickel boom puts Indonesia’s biodiversity goals under pressure: study

Indonesia holds the world’s largest nickel reserves and has rapidly expanded production, which a new study says has grown roughly tenfold over the past decade.

Se forma la tormenta tropical Dolly en el Atlántico

Se espera que Dolly se debilite antes de llegar a las islas del noreste del Caribe, aportando lluvias muy necesarias, pero con impactos limitados por el viento.

Boricuas educan sobre el clima extremo y crean comunidad entre sordos pese a falta de recursos

Miembros de la comunidad sorda de Puerto Rico identifican formas de protegerse ante el clima extremo

August Research Roundup: Select Papers

This month, we covered a long-term analysis suggesting that landfill methane emissions may be far higher than estimated, as well as new research on unexpected trends in U.S. extreme rainfall. Here are additional studies worth noting.

New Zealand Legislates Away Climate Tort, Part I: Smith v Fonterra and the Global Backlash Against Climate Litigation

This is the second of three consecutive posts on corporate climate accountability. Yesterday’s post examined the Paris Judicial Court’s June 2026 ruling in Notre Affaire à Tous et al. v. TotalEnergies SE. On August 18, 2026, New Zealand’s Parliament enacted the Climate Change Response (Tort Liability) Amendment Act 2026 (the Liability Act), passing 67 votes to […]

Nuveen Raises Over $1 Billion for Fund Backing Energy, Water, Resilience Upgrades for Buildings

Global investment manager Nuveen and its sustainable commercial real estate financing solutions business Nuveen Green […]

A Hard-Won Rule to Cut Chemical Plant Pollution Is Being Unraveled

In 2024, the Biden administration enacted wide-ranging regulations to protect communities near petrochemical plants from air toxics. The Trump administration has since granted exemptions to scores of polluting facilities and is working to rewrite the long-awaited rule. Read more on E360 →

Alex de Sherbinin Named Director of New Earth Institute Hub

**The appointment of Alex de Sherbinin to lead the Columbia Climate School's Earth Institute Hub will accelerate the integration of geospatial modeling and Earth observation systems essential for high-integrity LULUCF and Blue Carbon MRV.**

Climate change exposes 580 million children to 20 extra ‘heat-stress days’ every year

**Accelerating extreme heat anomalies amplify physical climate risks, destabilizing terrestrial biomes and undermining the permanence of Nature-Based carbon sinks.**

Deloitte to Pay Over $20 Million to Settle U.S. Anti-DEI Case

**Governance and workforce compliance failures at premier assurance providers jeopardize market trust in the independent auditing of environmental and social safeguards mandated by the ICVCM.**

Certain Energy Raises $13 Million for New Low-Cost, Long Duration Energy Storage Solution

**The scale-up of Certain Energy's long-duration energy storage (LDES) mitigates grid reliance on fossil-fuel peaker plants, directly suppressing localized emissions and ecological disruption.**

Philips Issues its First EuGB-Aligned Green Bond

Health technology company Philips announced the pricing of its new €650 million green bond offering, […]

Access to Urban Woodlands Linked With Lower Use of Antidepressants

**Urban woodland preservation delivers quantifiable public health co-benefits while enhancing municipal ecological resilience and local carbon sink capacity.**

Recognizing Scope 3, Reserving the Remedy: The Paris Court’s TotalEnergies Judgment

**Judicial recognition of Scope 3 emissions establishes a direct legal nexus between corporate downstream fossil combustion and accelerated global ecosystem degradation.**

Data Center Power Solutions Startup Emerald AI Raises $150 Million at Unicorn Valuation

**Emerald AI's grid flexibility technology directly mitigates the environmental strain of surging data center power demand by optimizing real-time clean energy dispatch and curtailing reliance on carbon-intensive peaker plants.**

Sabin Center Releases Summary Report for the Second Conference on Attribution Science and Climate Law

The Sabin Center for Climate Change Law and the Columbia Climate School have published the summary report for the Second Conference on Attribution Science and Climate Law, held at Columbia University on June 10–11, 2026. This event brought together physical scientists, legal scholars, public health researchers, economists, and policy experts to discuss key developments in climate change […]

Capturing the Future of Climate Change Mitigation: IEAGHG CCS Summer School 2026

**Accelerating engineered carbon capture and storage (CCS) deployment provides critical permanent sequestration capacity to curb atmospheric heat-trapping, shielding vulnerable biomes from severe climate-induced thermal stress.**

Bomb Fishing Is Wreaking Havoc on Indonesia's Coral Reefs

Fishers operating off the coast of Sulawesi, Indonesia, are detonating more than 8,000 underwater explosives each year, researchers estimate. The practice is turning picturesque coral reefs to “rubble.” Read more on E360 →

Harlem Week Climate Change Conference Centers Community Voices

**Urban environmental justice initiatives increasingly steer localized nature-based interventions and urban LULUCF enhancements to mitigate ecological disparities.**

A Polar Climate Ambassador Visits an Arctic Museum in Maine

**Arctic socio-ecological systems face acute disruption from rapid cryosphere thaw, threatening indigenous subsistence and permafrost carbon reservoirs.**

One of the World's ‘Most Wanted’ Lost Fish Is Rediscovered

**The rediscovery of the spinach pipefish confirms intact ecological resilience across Papua New Guinea's river systems, strengthening the ecological integrity case for adjacent watershed and forest conservation projects.**

Climate warming drives thermal shocks and accelerated freshwater habitat fragmentation

Factcheck: 10 flaws in the Conservative report on ‘cheap power’

**Grid decarbonization delays undermine national emissions reduction pathways, threatening terrestrial and marine ecological resilience through sustained reliance on fossil infrastructure.**

The Changing Shape of Extreme Rain in the U.S.

**Shifting spatial footprints and intensification of extreme precipitation substantially elevate physical permanence risks and soil degradation across domestic LULUCF and watershed ecosystems.**

Developing double materiality for climate-related financial policy

**Mandating double materiality frameworks compels financial institutions to account for outward ecological impacts, fundamentally elevating the standard for verifiable biodiversity and carbon sink preservation.**

Q&A: What is ‘long-duration energy storage’ – and why does the UK need it?

**Long-duration energy storage (LDES) accelerates the displacement of fossil-fueled peaker plants, reducing localized pollution and minimizing ecological pressures associated with grid infrastructure expansion.**

Thermal justice in urban climate change adaptation

**Targeted urban greening for thermal justice enhances microclimate stability, biodiversity corridors, and localized ecological resilience in historically redlined and heat-vulnerable communities.**

Bringing justice to informal adaptation to heat stress

**Informal adaptation to extreme heat stresses the urgent need for equitable urban LULUCF strategies to counteract localized ecological collapse in vulnerable settlements.**

A climate impact taxonomy operationalizing IPCC physical driver and risk concepts

**Operationalizing IPCC physical risk drivers establishes a standardized baseline for quantifying ecological resilience, directly reinforcing the integrity of nature-based carbon sequestration.**

Explainer: How the ‘super El Niño’ will reshape the world’s weather

The world is currently experiencing what is expected to become the strongest El Niño on record – dubbed a “super El Niño”… The post Explainer: How the ‘super El Niño’ will reshape the world’s weather appeared first on Carbon Brief.

Analysis: The two largest reservoirs in the US have hit record-low levels

**Severe multi-decadal drought driving US reservoir depletion degrades critical riparian corridors and severely undermines baseline LULUCF sequestration capacities.**

Record Low Lake Mead: “Millennium Drought” or Inevitable Result of Demand Exceeding Supply?

**Depleting water levels at Lake Mead destabilize regional hydrology and threaten surrounding desert carbon sinks and aquatic ecosystems.**

UAH v6.1 Global Temperature Update for July, 2026: +0.48 deg. C

**Persistent atmospheric warming trends (+0.48°C anomaly) exacerbate ecological stress, directly threatening the permanence of nature-based carbon sequestration.**

UAH v6.1 Global Temperature Update for June, 2026: +0.46 deg. C

**The persistent +0.16°C per decade global warming trend directly threatens the permanence and stability of LULUCF and Blue Carbon sequestration sinks.**

UAH v6.1 Global Temperature Update for May, 2026: +0.53 deg. C

**Rising global lower tropospheric temperatures threaten the ecological permanence of nature-based carbon sinks.**

Pressure Causes Temperature? It’s Time to Climb Down from “Mount Stupid”

**Fringe thermodynamic theories challenging radiative forcing threaten the foundational scientific consensus required for validating long-term ecological carbon sequestration.**

7 Indigenous Guarani killed after loose grain trailer hits car in central Brazil

Seven Indigenous Guarani, including two children and a prominent community leader, were killed Aug. 14 in a crash with a grain cargo trailer that reportedly broke loose from the truck pulling it in central Brazil. All seven were from Kalipety village in the Tenondé Porã Indigenous Territory in São Paulo state. A fisher who witnessed […]