LONDON & CHENNAI, India–(BUSINESS WIRE)–#africa–In another historic step for the world’s first Voluntary Carbon Exchange, CTX has partnered with SASA ENVIRO, a revered Chennai-based Environmental and Agricultural Solutions provider. This National Master Licensee will also operate a White Label version of the CTX platform to deliver an Indian operated, owned, and branded version of the world’s leading global Voluntary Carbon platform.

This grants Indian buyers – Corporate, Brokers and institutions – immediate access to hundreds of projects worldwide, with millions of credits listed on CTX across many nations ready for T+0 clearance and settlement.

The world has slowly started taking climate change and is realizing carbon has been a natural killer. While the change is slowly coming in, it is tough to eliminate all the sources of carbon at a go. Hence the concept of carbon credit was bought into the picture so that the companies contributing more to emissions and pollution could invest in carbon-positive ventures through a carbon credit product. While a lot of Carbon credit business happens voluntarily, a few exchanges have made their mark. Here is the list of the best exchanges that one should keep an eye on in 2023.

Blossoming out of South America, BioCarbon Registry (BCR) recently ‘rebranded’ from ProClima but only the name has changed. Runner up to Verra VCS in the 2021 Environmental Finance Awards for Best GHG program, BioCarbon Registry has developed and continues to develop project standards and methodologies for biodiversity and GHG projects which are committed to long term sustainability. Their standard is applicable to voluntary and regulated markets (in South America) and CTX’s cloud-based infrastructure is now electronically interfaced with BioCarbon Registry’s blockchain technology making it possible to buy their high-quality Verified Carbon Credits (VCCs) electronically 24/7, 365 days.

In December 2021 over 6,000 CDM Project proponents received emails from the UNFCCC inviting them to list inventory on CTX, to satisfy cashed up buyer demand. Not only CERs but increased treasure troves of Verra VCS and Gold Standard credits have been uncovered and millions of dollars in funds in the CTX Exchange escrow accounts have been flowing to projects and credit owners in a record-breaking quarter.

Buyers on CTX range from large trading houses to small reseller brokers (offsets for smaller companies) to large corporations buying direct. So, these aren’t numbers flipping on a screen – not derivatives or futures, they are verified issued credits being sold to offset emissions.

In addition, CTX signed up over 60 new trading members – buyers and sellers.

With a number of large institutional buyers ‘hoarding’ credits from Verra VCS and Gold Standard like Scrooge – it seems it is up to ‘Uncle CDM’ to give project developers the gifts they deserve. Given CTX is a market for genuine Offset buyers (3rd parties) in the absence of what they think are their preferred offsets they will often accept what we can deliver.  For now the CTX Index only shows the last trades (being updated soon) and does not show the exponential rise in credit sales, or the incredible liquidity we have seen lately  where inventory has been on the exchange for less than 24 hours before selling, and sometimes sold minutes after listing. 

In the past 3 months sales of CERs on CTX has skyrocketed– both in the CDM Registry and for CTX CERs (located outside the CDM Registry, in one of the National Registries).  As of 29th November, the average Transaction for CDM CERs is over 50,000 credits and for CTX CERs is over 100,000 per trade, despite the range of trades are from micro 100 credits to multiple excess of 250,000 credits.

The International Business Aviation Council (IBAC) represents over 18,000 operators worldwide in leading the way on Aviation emissions reductions. In conjunction with their 16 member associations on 6 continents, IBAC members have made serious carbon neutral commitments and thanks to their new partnership with CTX action on them is now both inflight and real-time.

What a huge last three months we have seen in the carbon offsetting markets. With HUGE buyer interest in the market, we have seen a massive run on lower priced credits (under US$2/tonne), which has seen prices driven up and inventory being snapped up at rates that we have NEVER seen before.

The Voluntary markets are awash with opinions. It seems that after many years of riding the renewable wave, now many people think they should be discarded (or commoditised?) in favour of Nature based removal programs. But it feels like that is ‘credit focused’ – not ‘climate change focused’.

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