Tag - emissions

 
 

EMISSIONS

Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group has decided to withdraw from the Net-Zero Banking Alliance, a spokesperson said.
BUSINESS / Companies
Mar 4, 2025
Japan’s SMFG joins Wall Street in exiting net zero banking group
Japan’s second-largest bank has decided to withdraw from the Net-Zero Banking Alliance.
Hidetaka Ishii, an official at the Chiba Municipal Government, says close coordination with private-sector operators is key for regional decarbonization efforts.
ENVIRONMENT / Energy / OUR PLANET
Mar 2, 2025
Japan’s climate heroes show potential and limits of local initiatives
Chiba and others show the potential for local areas to accelerate the energy transition, as well as the challenges of building locally driven, carbon-free energy models.
The government will oblige some companies, particularly those in high-emitting industries including steelmaking, to participate in an emissions trading system to be introduced in fiscal 2026.
ENVIRONMENT / Sustainability
Feb 26, 2025
Japan adopts bill obliging firms' participation in emissions trading
Companies that emit at least 100,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide a year will be required to participate in the country's carbon emissions trading system.
Ancient trees and animals play crucial roles in ecosystems, carbon storage and even human health, yet their populations are dwindling due to deforestation, fishing and climate change.
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 23, 2025
Who will speak for the trees?
A slew of scientific discoveries shows why we should protect not just 1,000-year-old trees but also 200-year-old whales, 400-year-old fish and 10,000-year-old sea sponges.
A compressed natural gas station near Chennai on Wednesday
BUSINESS / Companies
Feb 20, 2025
Osaka Gas plans to boost sales of city gas in India tenfold
India is developing a city gas network to promote the use of natural gas, which is less environmentally damaging than coal and fuel oil.
The Chip Mong Insee cement factory in Kampot province, Cambodia, on Jan. 9. An investigation has shown that the plastic credits sector relies heavily on the polluting cement industry to burn collected waste, despite concerns about health risks and carbon emissions.
ENVIRONMENT / Sustainability
Feb 20, 2025
'What would you have us do?': The plastic credits problem
Credits place no obligations on buyers to stop producing or using unrecyclable plastic that ends up in the environment.
Laborers at a shipyard on the outskirts of Dhaka. Worker deaths, injuries and exposure to hazardous substances are common in the ship-breaking industry, as is environmental harm with toxic chemicals seeping into the beach and water, harming marine life.
ENVIRONMENT / Sustainability
Feb 19, 2025
Shipyards of Bangladesh brace as heavy emitting ships near end of life
Worker deaths and environmental harm are common in yards where vessels that have supplied richer nations are dismantled for scraps that can be used in manufacturing.
A gasoline blend containing bioethanol is sold at a gas station in Illinois in December. The United States and Brazil are keen to expand exports of bioethanol to Japan.
JAPAN / FOCUS
Feb 19, 2025
With 2050 net-zero goal on horizon, momentum builds for biofuel in Japan
Experts hope the increasing push for use of biofuels in gasoline-powered vehicles may help shift public awareness on environmental issues.
All Nippon Airways aircraft at Haneda Airport in Tokyo in August 2024. ANA has staked a lot on greener kinds of jet fuel, with 70% of the emissions reductions under its net-zero emissions plan coming from them.
ENVIRONMENT / Sustainability / OUR PLANET
Feb 16, 2025
Sky not the only limit for JAL and ANA’s climate goals
The airlines' similar but different carbon neutrality plans highlight the difficulty of decarbonization, especially as the sector is now growing again.
Nancy Gordon, Australia's commissioner-general for the Osaka Expo, in Canberra <i>on Monday</i>
JAPAN
Feb 12, 2025
Australia aims to use Osaka Expo to work more with Japan on decarbonization
Canberra also aims to promote collaboration in the field of space technology, with its expo pavilion slated to hold an event with JAXA.
Homes destroyed by wildfire in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood of Los Angeles earlier this month. Insured losses caused by this and other fires raging in the area in recent weeks have been valued at over $30 billion.
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 5, 2025
Fossil fuel insurance is still way too cheap
Despite mounting losses from climate-induced disasters, insurers continue underwriting fossil fuels. Raising the cost of such policies would help cut emissions and benefit many.
A climate change demonstrator takes part in a protest to denounce the impact of U.S. politics on climate change, outside the U.S. Embassy in London on Jan. 11.
ENVIRONMENT / Climate change
Feb 5, 2025
Top climate scientist declares 2 degrees Celsius climate goal 'dead'
A stark new analysis concludes that Earth's climate is more sensitive to rising greenhouse gas emissions than previously thought.
Cows graze in a deforested pasture in Brazil's Amazon located in the municipality of Itapua do Oeste, Rondonia state, Brazil, in 2020.
ENVIRONMENT / Sustainability
Feb 3, 2025
Brazil's carbon trade takes off, but agribusiness escapes scrutiny
The regulation is still expected to bring legal security and foster carbon projects that protect the Amazon against pressure from the agribusiness sector.
The findings on the alarming acceleration of warming have enormous ramifications for ocean health, as rising temperatures impact everything from coral reefs to fisheries.
ENVIRONMENT / Climate change
Jan 28, 2025
Oceans are warming faster and faster as the Earth traps more energy
The alarming acceleration helps explain why 2023 and 2024 saw unprecedented ocean temperatures — and more extreme storms.
A pipe for transporting carbon dioxide to removal equipment at a carbon capture and storage (CCS) test site in Tomakomai, Hokkaido.
ENVIRONMENT / Energy / OUR PLANET
Jan 26, 2025
How Japan is looking deep underground to solve its carbon problem
Japan is investing billions of yen to get carbon capture and storage off the ground, but the technology is dogged by high costs and uncertainty.
A coal terminal in China's Hebei province in February 2023. Electricity use in the country grew 6.8% last year, outpacing overall economic growth at the highest clip in at least 15 years.
ENVIRONMENT / Energy
Jan 26, 2025
China’s surging power demand creates a climate conundrum
As the world’s largest polluter, China holds outsized sway over whether emissions can be reduced fast enough to avoid the worst impacts of global warming.
Asia is home to several sustainable investment taxonomies. Among them, the Singapore-Asia taxonomy is a regional framework for classifying sustainable investments across eight sectors that represent 90% of the continent's greenhouse gas emissions.
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 22, 2025
Sustainable finance taxonomies light up Asia’s net-zero path
With its burgeoning economies and population, Asia is key to decarbonizing the planet. The continent's sustainable taxonomies are helping direct finance toward climate solutions.
U.S. President Donald Trump signs executive orders in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington on Monday.
ENVIRONMENT / Climate change
Jan 21, 2025
Trump withdraws from Paris climate agreement — again
The newly minted president removed the world's biggest historic emitter from global efforts to fight climate change for the second time in a decade.
The area in Hiroshima Prefecture where a forest fire stared on Friday is flanked by a shooting range operated by the Maritime Self-Defense Forces.
JAPAN
Jan 17, 2025
Hiroshima forest on fire after military explosives drill
The fire follows the issuing of a dry weather advisory in southern Hiroshima after a long period without rain.
Hino Motors was charged with fraud in the U.S. District Court in Detroit for unlawfully selling 105,000 heavy-duty diesel engines in the United States from 2010 through 2022 that did not meet emissions standards.
BUSINESS / Companies
Jan 16, 2025
Hino Motors reaches $1.6 billion U.S. diesel emissions settlement
Hino said it booked an extraordinary loss of ¥230 billion in its second quarter results in October to cover the expected costs of resolving the litigation.

Longform

Wealthier women in the prewar era had been the targets of various media-related health campaigns that mistakenly encouraged them to avoid everything from riding bicycles to reading novels when their monthly cycles came around.
Menstruation in Japan: Breaking the silence, slowly